Matias Sessarego

A Hybrid Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm for Wind-Turbine Blade Optimization

A concurrent-hybrid non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (hybrid NSGA-II) has been developed and applied to the simultaneous optimization of the annual energy production, flapwise root-bending moment and mass of the NREL 5 MW wind-turbine blade. By hybridizing a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) with gradient-based local search, it is believed that the optimal set of blade designs could be achieved in lower computational cost than for a conventional MOEA. To measure the convergence between the hybrid and non-hybrid NSGA-II on a wind-turbine blade optimization problem, a computationally intensive case was performed using the non-hybrid NSGA-II. From this particular case, a three-dimensional surface representing the optimal trade-off between the annual energy production, flapwise root-bending moment and blade mass was achieved. The inclusion of local gradients in the blade optimization, however, shows no improvement in the convergence for this three-objective problem.

Large Wind Turbine Rotor Design using an Aero-Elastic / Free-Wake Panel Coupling Code

Despite the advances in computing resources in the recent years, the majority of large wind-turbine rotor design problems still rely on aero-elastic codes that use blade element momentum (BEM) approaches to model the rotor aerodynamics. The present work describes an approach to wind-turbine rotor design by incorporating a higher-fidelity free-wake panel aero-elastic coupling code called MIRAS-FLEX. The optimization procedure includes a series of design load cases and a simple structural design code. Due to the heavy MIRAS-FLEX computations, a surrogate-modeling approach is applied to mitigate the overall computational cost of the optimization. Improvements in cost of energy, annual energy production, maximum flap-wise root bending moment, and blade mass were obtained for the NREL 5MW baseline wind turbine.

Aero-structural optimization of wind turbine blades using a reduced set of design load cases including turbulence

Modern wind turbine aero-structural blade design codes generally use a smaller fraction of the full design load base (DLB) or neglect turbulent inflow as defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission standards. The current article describes an automated blade design optimization method based on surrogate modeling that includes a very large number of design load cases (DLCs) including turbulence. In the present work, 325 DLCs representative of the full DLB are selected based on the message-passing-interface (MPI) limitations in Matlab. Other methods are currently being investigated, e.g. a Python MPI implementation, to overcome the limitations in Matlab MPI and ultimately achieve a full DLB optimization framework. The reduced DLB and the annual energy production are computed using the state-of-the-art aero-servo-elastic tool HAWC2. Furthermore, some of the interior dimensions of the blade structure are optimized using the finite-element based cross-sectional analysis tool BECAS. The optimization framework is applied to redesign the NREL 5 MW wind turbine blade to obtain improvements in rotor performance and blade weight.

Analysis of winglets and sweep on wind turbine blades using a lifting line vortex particle method in complex inflow conditions

An in-house aero-elastic vortex code, called MIRAS, is used to investigate the aerodynamic performance of winglets and sweep on horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) blades in simple and complex inflow conditions. Previous studies using vortex codes applied to study winglets and blade sweep on HAWTs have typically not considered complex inflow conditions such as turbulent wind and shear. The reasons may include the absence of modeling capability, the computational cost associated with simulating long turbulent time series, and/or the computational cost associated with resolving the blade tips to a very fine level. A preliminary study is performed here, where the MIRAS code is applied on the NREL 5MW wind turbine with an arbitrary winglet shape and blade sweep. Results indicate that wind turbine blades with sweep or winglets might be better in performance compared to their straight blade counterparts.