An aeroelastic model for horizontal axis wind turbines

Abstract

In this paper an advanced aeroelastic numerical tool for horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) is presented. The tool is created by coupling an unsteady aerodynamic model based on the vortex method (using the vortex ring model for the lifting surface coupled with an unsteady free-wake vortex particle model) with an elastodynamic model based on the beam approximation. The coupling is non-linear in the sense that at every time step the two models interact through data transfer from the one to the other. The aeroelastic model is evaluated through comparisons of its predictions with experimental data as well as with predictions obtained by simpler models.