INVESTIGATION OF DYNAMIC RESPONSE AND WAKE ON LARGE SCALE WIND TURBINE BASED ON THE FREE WAKE METHOD

The aerodynamics and structural dynamics are combined to investigate wake and load differences for flexible and rigid large-scale wind turbines. In the design and checking stages, the dynamic situations and performance in wind turbine operations are considered. The unsteady free-wake method is used to calculate the wake geometries and the aerodynamic loads. The effect of aerodynamic loads, inertial loads and gravitational load are taken into account to obtain the dynamic characteristics of rotating flap/edgewise couple blade. The modal superposition method is also used to build the decoupled dynamics equations for the blade, which is then solved numerically. The results show that the wake, the aerodynamic performance and dynamic response are affected when the flexible of wind turbine is considered. The difference in dynamic loads between the flexible and rigid wind turbines shows that the aerodynamics/structure coupling effect is of significance in both wind turbine design and performance calculation.