COMMENT: TECHNOLGY

Energizing the wind industry

Wind energy projects around the globe from small installations to large farms, both onshore and offshore share a common goal: reduce unit cost while improving reliability. From a business perspective, technology contributes to viability by inuencing efcient wind energy generation, which can impact design, manufacturing, site selection, farm layout, deployment and operation.
Words: Ahmad Haidari, Global Industry Director, Energy and Process, ANSYS, Inc.
The industry must continually innovate to meet growing complexities. The combination of cost and weight reduction requirements, coupled with reliability and economic considerations, puts additional demand on engineering design and processes. For example, larger turbines installed farther offshore and in harsher environments call for a new set of innovations that cover all aspects of wind energy generation. Onshore wind farm site selection must reduce risk and overcome proximity and environmental concerns. Wind energy companies are tackling challenging designs in new powertrains, lighter towers, multiaccess turbines, oating platforms and quieter machines, among other priorities. All of this work is under way while energy companies in all corners of the globe compete to develop a reliable supply chain, decrease cost per unit and increase reliability. Wind energy companies are meeting these challenges by leveraging engineering simulation software. Historically, this technology has been used to simulate a specic design aspect, analyze a single component via a single physics, or identify behavior of specic components. Simulation applicable to wind energy projects includes uid mechanics, structural mechanics, electromagnetics and electronic analysis. There is, however, a growing trend to engineer the entire system by employing systems-level engineering and multidisciplinary modeling and analysis. To facilitate such high-level analysis, organizations must understand how singlephysics solutions are used today along with how they can work together when integrated in a common user environment and engineering workow. Fluid dynamics applications Fluid dynamics applications include aerodynamic design: thrust coefcient, blade structural integrity, ultimate loads and fatigue, noise prediction, wind gust uidstructure interaction, bird strike, icing, and near-wake and far-eld studies; site selection and farm layout: maximum project potential, power output (peak and average) and wind-load fatigue; and turbine placement: variable terrain, roughness, forestry, multiple wake effects, buildings and setbacks. This long list is expanding the industrys opportunities for applying high-delity engineering simulation. Consider wind farm siting, for example. The uptake for landbased installations is not as great as it could be. The easy sites have mostly been selected, and some people object to the noise and visual intrusion wind turbines create. Furthermore, wind farms affect radar signals, forcing turbines away from exposed hilltops to locations out of sight of antenna installations. Thus, wind farm developers are considering sites non-ideal for wind power generation: away from hilltops, in regions where ow can recirculate and turbulence can be high, and in heavily forested areas. Fluid dynamics simulation identies wake effects that signicantly impact the performance of downstream turbines, reducing power production and considerably increasing fatigue loading. Interest is growing in offshore turbine sites, where low ambient turbulence can result in reduced rates of wake recovery. Still, businesses are reluctant to invest in expensive wind farms without a guaranteed return on investment. Virtual prototyping tools are helping to make predictions of success more reliable. Structural mechanics applications Simulation-driven product design is regularly used for structural mechanics design and analysis of tower and rotor: structural integrity/safety, power conversion efciency, installation cost and maintenance, offshore transport, and installation; and component design: blades, gearboxes and bearings, generators, nacelles, rotors, drivers, motors, electronics cooling, and blade manufacturing. As wind turbine blades get larger, they are manufactured increasingly using berreinforced composites, and the development of increasingly larger rotor blades with complex structures requires the use of easy-to-handle simulation programs. Blades are particularly challenging because they require aerodynamic free-form geometry manufactured using a complex laminate structure with a large number of layers and selectable ber orientation. Simulation software allows R&D teams to assess the constructability of a design, enabling designers to incorporate production process parameters into the simulation.

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PES: North America

COMMENT: TECHNOLGY

In post-processing, the same software can perform a layer-by-layer analysis with stability calculations, taking into account all conventional failure criteria. Offshore installations come with their own set of engineering challenges. Support structures, for example, must function effectively in deep water and with large turbines. In addition, storms, rough seas and saltwater subject the entire turbine and its associated support structure to extreme stresses. Engineering simulation is a valuable tool for considering a number of effects that must be considered simultaneously, including loads from turbulent wind elds, the turbine control system, loads resulting from waves and currents, the elastic behavior of the support structure, and the seabeds soil characteristics. Electromagnetics and electronic applications Engineering simulation is widely used to optimize electromechanical systems: electrical machines, variable-speed control systems, transformers, power electronics, power distribution, and sensor and actuator design. In an example of optimizing performance of permanent magnet generators, one developer set out to develop a 2.5 mW pmg for wind power applications with the ambitious target of achieving an unprecedented 97.7 percent level of efciency at rated load in converting mechanical to electrical energy. Another goal was to increase performance and efciency at partial loads, because wind turbines often run at partial load. Traditional build-and-test methods could not achieve these goals in a reasonable amount of time. The engineers applied low-frequency

software to model the effect of different geometries and magnet properties, optimizing the electromagnetic performance of the generator. Engineering the wind energy system While it is important to model components accurately and with condence, todays complexities require a systems-level approach in designing and evaluating performance based on real-world conditions. Advances in engineering simulation software increasingly make this possible. For example, some tools enable modeling entire wind turbine systems. Value is further enhanced through advanced solver functionality including turbulence transition models, advanced contact models, multiphysics capabilities, composites tools, highperformance computing and the exibility to connect to third-party software for wind turbine blade manufacturing or aeroelasticity calculations. Coupled systems tools A wind turbines generator components convert mechanical energy to electrical energy. Engineers must accurately determine specications of various individual components which often originate from different manufacturers and then connect them into an efcient system. Advanced engineering simulation software can be applied to all sections of a wind turbine generator, leading to an efciently designed and optimized system as a whole. Without using simulation tools, it is almost impossible to determine the performance of a complex heterogeneous system that incorporates the high efciency requirements needed for the electrical system.

For example, an engineer can analyze the thermal load for, or impact upon, the different elements of the electrical network by employing electromagnetics and mechanical tools. In the same way, the feedback for temperature-dependent parameters can be determined for use in simulating the resulting deformations, or conducting further thermal studies with uid dynamics tools. Summary By leveraging high-level integration and advanced capabilities, engineers over time are extending their former point solutions. The trend in engineering design is for simulation to include additional details so the team can engineer the entire wind energy power generation system. In addition, engineering simulation tools are used in all aspects of wind energy from design to installation, including wind farm selection and siting, offshore installation, and manufacturing. The goal is to continue to improve efciency and reliability and ultimately drive down cost and reduce downtime, making wind energy continually more economically viable. As wind energy systems become more complex, engineering simulation can play an increasing, pivotal role in improvements and innovation which will enhance the viability, performance and overall success of wind energy.

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