Winds of change
Gemma Church investigates how
simulation and modelling is bringing innovation to turbine designs
T
he times are changing for wind turbines as manufacturers take a new design approach to reduce costs, improve reliability and extend the lifetime of
these structures. Historically, manufacturers used to design
wind turbines in very short times, usually beginning with a previous design and using existing design expertise. Once these designs were in the market, the manufacturers would start thinking about optimising costs and performance. Tis approach has changed. Manufacturers
are applying simulation and optimisation early on in the design process to create entirely new and more efficient machines. Alfredo Rapado, business development at Altair Spain, said: ‘Tey have realised that this way of applying a simulation-driven design process, is far more
beneficial and efficient than the traditional way.’ Simulation-driven design tools are used in
both the design of novel turbine designs and the optimisation of existing designs, both in the physical product and at the installation stage and throughout the lifecycle of a turbine to optimise its operation and maintenance. Chris Hayhurst, consulting manager at
MathWorks, said: ‘MATLAB and Simulink can be used at many stages of the wind turbine design and deployment process. Site designers can analyse and predict wind conditions to optimise wind farm sites and determine the proper voltage compensation to fuse wind farms into the electric grid. Site operators can monitor and process data to ensure wind turbine availability and schedule maintenance.’ Hayhurst added: ‘On the design of future
turbines, once the detailed blade computational fluid dynamics calculations have been done to optimise the blade profiles, Simulink is used to simulate and design every part of the turbine, including the gearbox, generator, power electronics and control systems.’ Pressures within the industry mean the
optimisation of existing systems is the main concern for manufacturers, as opposed to introduced new designs, according to Jean-Daniel Lecuyer, senior portfolio technical specialist of
SIMULIA at Dassault Systèmes, who explained: ‘Te wind market is challenged right now because of the low price of oil, gas and other energy resources. Tis means there is limited appetite for radical developments in wind turbine designs. In these circumstances, companies mostly rely mostly on optimising existing designs.’ For example, engineers at manufacturing
company Nabtesco used Dassault Systèmes’ Abaqus finite element analysis (FEA) soſtware to calculate the contact area and stress of various pinion gear designs in a turbine. Te engineers used their own subroutine and were able to model both the contact area and stress history to evaluate the design. Tis allowed the Nabtesco engineers to
maximise the gear contact area, while minimising average stress contact, to increase the durability of the gear design. Tis, in turn, decreased the maintenance and costs associated with the turbine, without requiring numerous physical experiments. Furthermore, the Isight tool was also used for post-processing automation and design optimisation to reduce the design time drastically.
Digital twins Te Internet of Tings (IoT) is being adopted in an increasing range of industries, and the wind
Visualisation of a wind turbine blade highlighting design with composite layers 26 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
Simulation of a wind turbine created using multi-body dynamics @scwmagazine l
www.scientific-computing.com
Altair/Dassault/Ansys
Altair/Dassault/Ansys
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