Ground testing of a 1% gravo-aeroelastically scaled additively-manufactured wind turbine blade with bio-inspired structural design

RENEWABLE ENERGY

卷:148

Article

Kaminski, Meghan¹  Loth, Eric¹  Griffith, D. Todd²  Qin, Chao (Chris)¹ 

[1] Univ Virginia, Dept Mech & Aerosp Engn, 122 Engineers Way, Charlottesville, VA 22904 USA

[2] Univ Texas Dallas, Dept Mech Engn, 800 W Campbell, Richardson, TX 75080 USA

关键词: Scaling;    Wind turbines;    Bio-inspiration;    Additive manufacturing;    Structural optimization;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.renene.2019.10.152

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

A gravo-aeroelastic scaling (GAS) method is developed to design wind turbine blades that represent centrifugal, aerodynamic, and gravitational loads of extreme-scale turbines. To match these elements, certain blade characteristics are given priority: non-dimensional 1st flap-wise frequency, non-dimensional flapping tip deflection, and tip-speed-ratio. Using the GAS method, a 1% sub-scale blade was designed to match the mass distributions and ground tested to match the non-dimensional flap-wise dynamics and deflections of Sandia National Lab's 13.2-MW blade. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first manufactured blade model to employ gravo-aeroelastic scaling using additive manufacturing and bio-inspiration. A series of scale models were designed, built, and ground-tested using weights consistent with scaled steady rated load conditions of an extreme-scale turbine. The models designed were evolved to increase gravo-elastic scaling performance by employing lightweight bio-inspirational morphology and carbon fiber reinforcements. The final version has non-dimensional gravo-elastic errors as follows: 3% in total mass, 15.6% in deflection from ground-based loads representing full-scale steady rated conditions, and 8.1% in the first flap-wise modal frequency (when normalized by the scaled rpm for rated conditions). This model demonstrates the GAS concept can be applied to manufacture sub-scale models as small as 1% of an extreme-scale rotor blade. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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