Simulating flutter for a 100-m wind turbine blade

Simulating flutter for a 100-m wind turbine blade: using a CFD-CSD coupled method in OpenFOAM

Van Zuijlen, A.H. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

Aerodynamics, Wind Energy, Flight Performance and Propulsion

2016-08-15

In this study a full CFD-CSD FSI method is developed, extended with a modal approach, to assess the potential flutter behavior of the SNL 100-m wind turbine blade. The FSI method is based on the existing FOAM-FSI framework and extended with a non-linear beam model. The analysis consists of four steps: non-linear steady state FSI deformation of the blade; extracting force distribution gradients of blade deformations along eigenmode shapes; linearize the flow around the steady state using a modal approach; ans simulate the fully linearized model to assess the stability of the system. The method is applied to the SNL 100-m blade in a parked configuration, with nonturbulent, non-yawed inflow wind speeds of 50m=s and 70m=s. The results show a stabilizing effect of the flow for both cases. A further analysis of the modal model suggests that the coupling between the flapwise bending modes and torsional modes are indeed strong, but do not cause an instability for the test case considered. The results of the modal analysis are lightly verified with full CFD results.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7e5b83c7-fb42-46f4-a85f-a0dab2a3f178

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2016 Stuurman, M.