Wind Turbine Blade Design with Airfoil Shape Control Using Invertible Neural Networks: Article No. 042052

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus Citations

Abstract

Wind turbine blade design is a highly multidisciplinary process that involves aerodynamics, structures, controls, manufacturing, costs, and other considerations. More efficient blade designs can be found by controlling the airfoil cross-sectional shapes simultaneously with the bulk blade twist and chord distributions. Prior work has focused on incorporating panel-based aerodynamic solvers with a blade design framework to allow for airfoil shape control within the design loop in a tractable manner. Including higher fidelity aerodynamic solvers, such as computational fluid dynamics, makes the design problem computationally intractable. In this work, we couple an invertible neural network trained on high-fidelity airfoil aerodynamic data to a turbine design framework to enable the design of airfoil cross sections within a larger blade design problem. We detail the methodology of this coupled framework and showcase its efficacy by aerostructurally redesigning the IEA 15-MW reference wind turbine blade. The coupled approach reduces the cost of energy by 0.9% compared to a more conventional design approach. This work enables the inclusion of high-fidelity aerodynamic data earlier in the design process, reducing cycle time and increasing certainty in the performance of the optimal design.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Physics: Conference Series
Volume2265
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/JA-5000-81856

Keywords

  • airfoil shape design
  • blade design
  • neural network
  • optimization

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