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The goal of further reducing the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) has driven the investigation of large-scale wind turbines. This work presents a simple, rapid and detailed approach for the structural design of the tower and monopile without a controller, but with frequency and high fidelity structural verification. The approach uses an optimization to reduce the mass of the structures while meeting strength, buckling and geometric constraints by using analytical equations. A verification of frequency constraints is performed with BModes, and ANSYS Mechanical APDL is used for high fidelity verification of stress and buckling. The approach is applied to study the design space of three 25 MW offshore wind turbines with different rotor diameters and cone angles, and to evaluate the nacelle center of mass fore-aft location effect. Results obtained show that the tower and monopile are more susceptible to changes in the rotor thrust than the overturning moment even for designs with high pre-cone angle and large distance of the nacelle center of mass from the tower axis. But it is possible to obtain structurally feasible tower and monopile designs for the three 25 MW turbines studied while not exceeding diameter and wall thickness limits. However, mass penalties can be decreased by 0.8-14%, to further reduce the cost of energy, by increasing the diameter limit which may require manufacturing technology development. The approach applied and studies serve to understand the design space of the tower and monopile for a 25 MW turbine, and provide baseline designs that can be used in the development of a controller and evaluation of a full suite of design load cases.

In view of the requirement of cost reduction and efficiency increase for large-scale wind turbine blades, a medium-reactivity epoxy infusion resin system was developed, which contained 20% fast curing agent and 80% slow curing agent. The properties of medium-reactivity epoxy infusion resin system were evaluated via physical and chemical analysis, application process ability analysis, resin clear casting mechanical properties analysis, and laminate specimens mechanical properties analysis. The results indicated that the mechanical properties of this medium-reactivity epoxy infusion resin system can meet the requirements of blade design, and the pre-curing time of the resin was reduced from 3.0h to 2.3h. The application process ability of medium-reactivity epoxy infusion resin system in large-scale wind turbine blade was also verified. The blade parts pre-curing time was shortened by 0.5-1 hour, which meets the target of blade cost reduction and efficiency increase.

Mass and cost tradeoffs by deploying three optimized spars, made of all-glass, hybrid and all-carbon composites, applied to a publicly available large-scale composite blade of 100 m in length for a 13.2 MW wind turbine, are explored. The blade mass and cost minimizations are calculated for two design load cases, generating the worst aerodynamic loads for parked and rotating rotor blades, while meeting the stiffness, strength, stability and resonance design requirements, as recommended by the wind turbine standards. The optimization cases are formulated as a single-objective, multi-constraint optimization problem, while taking into account the manufacturability of hybrid spars in particular, and it is solved using a genetic algorithm method. The blade mass lowers in the range of 8.1–13.3%, 18.5–20.7% and 25.7–26.4% for the optimized all-glass, hybrid and all-carbon spars, respectively, while the cost decreases for the optimized all-glass spars only. The cost increases in a range of 1.2–13.6% and 24.5–31.5% when the optimized hybrid and all-carbon spars are used. Further, the hybrid spar optimization using the blade mass and cost objective functions, as well as the effects of spar optimization on the blade’s structural performance in terms of tip deflection, strength, buckling resistance and first natural frequency, are discussed.

Aerodynamic noise from wind turbine blades is one of the major hindrances for the widespread use of large-scale wind turbines generating green energy. In order to more accurately guide wind turbine blade manufacturers to optimize the blade geometry for aerodynamic noise reduction, an acoustic model that not only understands the relation between the behavior of the sound source and the sound generation, but also accounts for the compressibility effect, was derived by rearranging the continuity and Navier–Stokes equations as a wave equation with a lump of source terms, including the material derivative and square of the velocity divergence. Our acoustic model was applied to low Mach number, weakly compressible turbulent flows around NACA0012 airfoil. For the computation of flow fields, a large-eddy simulation (LES) with the dynamic Smagorinsky subgrid scale (SGS) model and the cubic interpolated pseudo particle (CIP)-combined unified numerical procedure method were conducted. The reproduced turbulent flow around NACA0012 airfoil was in good agreement with the experimental data. For the estimation of acoustic fields, our acoustic model and classical sound source models, such as Lighthill and Powell, were performed using our LES database. The investigation suggested that the derived material derivative of the velocity divergence plays a dominant role as sound source. The distribution of the sources in our acoustic model was consistent with that of the classical sound source models. The sound pressure level (SPL) predicted based on the above-mentioned LES and our newly derived acoustic model was in reasonable agreement with the experimental data. The influence of the increase of Mach number on the acoustic field was investigated. Our acoustic source model was verified to be capable of treating the influence of Mach numbers on the acoustic field.

The paper does research on top flange fatigue damage of large-scale wind turbine generator. It establishes finite element model of top flange connection system with finite element analysis software MSC. Marc/Mentat, analyzes its fatigue strain, implements load simulation of flange fatigue working condition with Bladed software, acquires flange fatigue load spectrum with rain-flow counting method, finally, it realizes fatigue analysis of top flange with fatigue analysis software MSC. Fatigue and Palmgren-Miner linear cumulative damage theory. The analysis result indicates that its result provides new thinking for flange fatigue analysis of large-scale wind turbine generator, and possesses some practical engineering value.

Because the vibration signals of faulty wind turbine are non-linear and non-stationary, to obtain the obvious fault features become difficult. In this study, the incipient fault of the main bearing used in large scale wind turbine is studied by using a multifractal method based on the Wavelet Modulus Maxima (WTMM) method. The real vibration signals from the main bearings are analyzed using the multifractal spectrum. The spectrum of the vibration signals is quantified by spectral characteristics including its range and the Holder exponent corresponding to the maximum dimension. The results show that the range of Holder exponent of the main bearing which worked normally is much narrower. While the ranges of the vibration signals of the main bearing with incipient fault are wider. We also found that the fault features are different at various wind turbine rotational frequencies. Those demonstrate that the incipient fault features of main bearing of large scale wind turbine can be extract effectively using the multifractal spectrum obtained from WTMM method.

The method of spectrum analysis is present to detect fault signals of main shaft and increasing gearbox of large-scale wind turbines, so as to prevent from huge loss and serious accidents. The real-time signals detected from wind turbines will be compared with those stored in the database to find whether the amplitude of the signals exceed the alarm threshold. Frequency spectrum is obtained based on both wavelet transform and frequency spectrum analysis of collected signals through the graphic programming language–LabVIEW. The method can judge accurate fault type and its position on wind turbines, which present evidence for fault diagnosis of the gearbox and main shaft. Experimental results indicate that the method is effective.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Rotor diameter Machine rating Rotational speed Number of blades Teetering Power control Braking systems Fixed speed, two speed or variable speed Type of generator Drive train mounting arrangement options Drive train compliance Rotor position with respect to tower Tower stiffness Personnel safety and access issues References

In recent years, renewable resources, especially large‐scale wind farms, are increasingly used to generate clean electricity in modern power systems. The penetration level of these power plants is significant, and due to the variation in the wind speed resulting in the variation in the generated power, different aspects of power systems, especially reliability, may be affected that must be studied. Reliability evaluation of power system considering large‐scale wind farms is dependent on two factors: the failure rates of composed components including turbine, generator, electrical converters, transformer, and cable and the variation in the generated power arising from variation in the wind speed. In this paper, dependency of different component failure rates on the wind speed variation is considered, and using the Monte Carlo simulation, reliability evaluation of power systems containing large‐scale wind farms is performed. A wind farm equipped with the permanent magnet synchronous generator is considered, and the failure rate of composed components considering wind speed variation is determined. Based on the wind speed‐dependent failure rate associated with the components of energy conversion system, the important reliability indices of Roy Billinton test system including loss of load expectation and expected energy not supplied are calculated.

The flow structure in the wake of a model wind turbine is explored under negligible and high turbulence in the freestream region of a wind tunnel at R e ∼ 7 × 10 4 . Attention is placed on the evolution of the integral scale and the contribution of the large-scale motions from the background flow. Hotwire anemometry was used to obtain the streamwise velocity at various streamwise and spanwise locations. The pre-multiplied spectral difference of the velocity fluctuations between the two cases shows a significant energy contribution from the background turbulence on scales larger than the rotor diameter. The integral scale along the rotor axis is found to grow linearly with distance, independent of the incoming turbulence levels. This scale appears to reach that of the incoming flow in the high turbulence case at x / d ∼ 35–40. The energy contribution from the turbine to the large-scale flow structures in the low turbulence case increases monotonically with distance. Its growth rate is reduced past x / d ∼ 6–7. There, motions larger than the rotor contribute ∼ 50 % of the total energy, suggesting that the population of large-scale motions is more intense in the intermediate field. In contrast, the wake in the high incoming turbulence is quickly populated with large-scale motions and plateau at x / d ∼ 3 .