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Advanced Structural Response and Performance of Wind Turbines

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A3: Wind, Wave and Tidal Energy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 May 2024 | Viewed by 1183

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Via G. Duranti 93, IT06125 Perugia, Italy
Interests: wind turbine; vibrations; aeroelasticity; fault diagnosis; wakes; SCADA; applied aerodynamics; mechanical system dynamics
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Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Polytechnic School, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
Interests: wind engineering; wind turbine; structural response of small size wind turbines; wind response models of slender structures

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The increasing attention to distributed power generation for smart cities and green buildings has been accompanied by a large interest in micro and small wind turbines. Small turbines are a particularly fascinating field, allowing for a widespread diffusion of clean and renewable energy sources throughout their surrounding territories. However, this growing interest is not accompanied by appropriate technological improvement; therefore, they still play a marginal role in energy production. In this context, a stark contrast exists between the potential and reality, which appears even more striking when compared to the large wind-turbine sector.

The behaviour of small-sized generators is often even more complex than that of the large ones due to complex wind flow and the great speed of rotation inducing fluid–structure interactions. The proximity of the rotor level to the ground, such as in an urban environment or island location, favours the presence of large turbulence and gusty wind, which can have a detrimental effect on energy production, structural safety and effective lifetime. In addition, for these reasons, there is still the need to further increase the knowledge and develope the technology of these specific facilities and to improve calculation models for describing their actual behaviour in the atmospheric boundary layer, in parked and operating conditions.

This Special Issue welcomes research addressing the aforementioned topics, considering both the efficiency of the power plant and the assessment of the structural behaviour of vertical or horizontal small-sized wind turbines. Contributions regarding experimental tests, in-field installations, and full-scale monitoring are also welcome, as well as research papers developing calculation procedures of the load modelling and dynamic response that are useful for the design and new certification standards.

Dr. Francesco Castellani
Dr. Luisa Pagnini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • small-sized wind turbines
  • power curve
  • dynamic response
  • wind load
  • experimental investigations
  • full-scale experiments
  • fatigue problems
  • turbulence effects

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

26 pages, 5224 KiB  
Article
Fluid–Structure Interaction Analysis of a Wind Turbine Blade with Passive Control by Bend–Twist Coupling
by Jorge Mario Tamayo-Avendaño, Ivan David Patiño-Arcila, César Nieto-Londoño and Julián Sierra-Pérez
Energies 2023, 16(18), 6619; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16186619 - 14 Sep 2023
Viewed by 923
Abstract
The idea of improving the energy output for small wind turbines without compromising the remaining aspects of the technology, such as costs and structural integrity, is very appealing in the context of the growing concern for global warming and the goal of providing [...] Read more.
The idea of improving the energy output for small wind turbines without compromising the remaining aspects of the technology, such as costs and structural integrity, is very appealing in the context of the growing concern for global warming and the goal of providing electricity to remote and isolated regions. This work aims to contribute to the development of distributed wind generation by exploring the effects of bend–twist coupling on the performance of a wind turbine with a focus on a small rotor based on the NREL Phase VI blade geometry. After defining a structure in composite materials exhibiting the coupling behavior along with a reference counterpart, a comparative numerical analysis is performed using a Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) analysis. The main numerical framework is based on commercial software and consists of a finite-volume solver for fluid physics, a finite-element solver for solid physics, and a coupling interface for the interaction problem. The results, complemented with the predictions from a one-way analysis based on the blade-element momentum theory are used to define the increments in rotor torque. The analysis of the annual energy yield shows a 3% increase due to the bend–twist coupling used as a passive pitch mechanism, considering a Rayleigh distribution with an 11 m/s average wind speed. Simultaneously, the coupling causes increments of 0.2% and 0.3% for the blade root flapwise moment and the rotor thrust force, respectively, when considering parked conditions and a simplified extreme wind model. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Structural Response and Performance of Wind Turbines)
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