Development of a wind turbine drive train engineering model

Development of a wind turbine drive train engineering model

Derks, A.

Aerospace Engineering

2008-08-11

Wind turbines grow bigger every day. With rotor diameters exceeding the size of a soccer pitch [I1][I3], it s not hard to imagine that designing such gigantic structures is a formidable task. The multidisciplinary nature of wind turbine design adds to the complexity of this task, as the subsystems of a wind turbine need to be tuned with respect to a common objective to achieve a cost effective and structurally sound design. This rapport describes the construction of a model that can be used in an optimization routine with the goals to automatically design an optimized wind turbine drive train on the conceptual level and to allow the investigation of changes in subsystem design with increasing rotor diameter. A secondary objective is to gain insight in the construction of an optimization model of a wind turbine drive train and the problems one encounters during implementation. The drive train under consideration consists of three subsystems: the rotor, the gearbox and the generator. Only the necessary level of detail to describe the relationships between the subsystems and their geometry and constraints is implemented. Without making a trade off between computer languages, Matlab’s optimization toolbox was used for the implementation. The model and constraint of the rotor has been verified. The gearbox model has not been verified due to lack of reliable data. The primary objective has not been met due to the inability of the optimizer to find a global optimum. Also, the optimizer was only able to deal with the implemention of the constraints and models if they were further simplified.

Windenergy

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:af1494d2-17a4-49c8-969b-6825ec3f6be0

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2008 A. Derks