Wind Turbine Design Codes: A Comparison of the Structural Response

Marshall L. Buhl, Alan D. Wright, Kirk G. Pierce

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

16 Scopus Citations

Abstract

The National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is continuing a comparison of several computer codes used in the design and analysis of wind turbines. The second part of this comparison determined how well the programs predict the structural response of wind turbines. In this paper, we compare the structural response for four programs: ADAMS, BLADED, FAST-AD, and YawDyn. ADAMS is a commercial, multibody-dynamics code from Mechanical Dynamics, Inc. BL4DED is a commercial, performance and structural-response code from Garrad Hassan and Partners Limited. FAST-AD is a structural-response code developed by Oregon State University and the University of Utah for the NWTC. YawDyn is a structural-response code developed by the University of Utah for the NWTC. ADAMS, FAST-AD, and YawDyn use the University of Utah's AeroDyn subroutine package for calculating aerodynamic forces. Although errors were found in all the codes during this study, once they were fixed, the codes agreed surprisingly well for most of the cases and configurations we evaluated. One unresolved discrepancy between BLADED and the AeroDyn-based codes was when there was blade and/or teeter motion in addition to a large yaw error.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages12-22
Number of pages11
StatePublished - 2000
Event2000 ASME Wind Energy Symposium - Reno, NV, United States
Duration: 10 Jan 200013 Jan 2000

Conference

Conference2000 ASME Wind Energy Symposium
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityReno, NV
Period10/01/0013/01/00

Bibliographical note

For preprint version, including full-text online document, see NREL/CP-500-27470.

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-500-32232

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