Multi-disciplinary Design Optimization of a Rotor for an Offshore Wind Turbine

Abstract

Currently, the design approach in the wind industry is to perform sequential optimization of different disciplines like wake aerodynamics, turbine, support structure, etc., which might fail to capture the interactions between these disciplines, leading to a sub-optimal design. Literature suggests that a Multi-disciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) tool that integrates all the different disciplines of a wind farm results in a lower LCOE value compared to the conventional approach. However, of all the existing tools, some of them lack user agility (do not cater to all the stakeholders of a wind farm), demand high computational resources, or use low fidelity models. This thesis deals with the wind turbine discipline, with a focus on rotor optimization. The existing framework of WINDOW (the tool being developed at TU Delft) uses a low fidelity static model for the rotor, with a safety factor of 1.5 to account for the missing dynamic effects of loading. To study the implications of the same, a high fidelity dynamic model with an aero-servo-elastic coupling, is integrated into WINDOW, and the differences resulting in the optimized design, from the two models, are evaluated.