Geometric nonlinear dynamic response of wind turbines with different power performance

Abstract

As the size of wind turbine blades increases, the influence of geometric nonlinearity on aerodynamic, structural and design of blades becomes more and more serious. In this work, the efficient aero-elastic calculation of large flexible blades is studied. In order to solve the problem of efficient aeroelastic caculation of large flexible blades, this work applied the geometrically exact beam theory based on Legendre spectral finite element and coupled with the blade element momentum theory to establish the aero-elastic analysis model of large flexible blades. This model can efficiently calculate the deformation and load on the blade under aerodynamic loading and fully consider the influence of geometric nonlinearity caused by deformation on aeroelastic ability. Taking NREL 5MW and IEA 15MW wind turbines as examples, the linear and nonlinear dynamic responses of these two wind turbine blades are calculated. The result shows that the neglect of nonlinear effect will bring error. From 5MW wind turbine to 15MW wind turbine, the numerical error increased by 27.88%. The influence of geometric nonlinearity of blades on dynamic responses is analysed, which is of great significance to improve the design level of large-scale wind turbines.