Topic: Wind Turbine Systems

Editor-in-Chief
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Youth Editorial Board Member
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Topic: Understanding the aerodynamic response of floating turbines with hybrid wind tunnel experiments
The aerodynamics of floating turbines is complicated by large motions permitted by the floating foundation and for this reason the interaction between turbine, atmospheric wind and wake is not yet fully understood. The goal of my research is to characterize the aerodynamic response of a large wind turbine as it experiences large rigid-body motions as would occur during normal operation. In the experiment, the turbine is reproduced with a high-fidelity scale model, featuring realistic control capabilities. The floating support platform, the hydrodynamic excitation, and the motion of the structure are simulated with a 6-degrees-of-freedom robotic platform. A variety of operating conditions is considered, ranging from imposed sinusoidal motion in different directions to normal sea states. The main outputs of the experiment are rotor forces and the wind speed in the turbine wake. Measurements collected in wind tunnel testing are utilized to shed light on the physics of the energy-conversion process for floating wind turbines, and to validate the accuracy of aerodynamic load predictions by offshore wind modeling tools.

WindTAK Ltd., Lodz, Poland

Topic: Retrofitting and extending operational life of multimegawatt wind turbines through smart devices and big data analysis
Through intelligent usage of aerodynamics, material engineering and fast cellular IoT networks the maintenance cost and operation risks can be mitigated. Our small, tailor-made rotor attachments that optimize the flow pattern around the rotor. As a result the blade aerodynamics works better producing more electrical energy. WindTAK invented an IoT device that is plugged inside these flow-optimizing attachments in order to measure rotor vibrations. Data from these IoT sensors is wirelessly sent to a logger device on the nacelle and then forwarded to a cloud server, where analysis is performed. It can be shown that improving turbine efficiency can go together with the increase of the green energy production and the extension of the lifetime of wind turbines while cutting the wind park operator costs. This improves social perception by providing more of the cheapest electricity while improving the income of wind park operators.