Posters

Abstract

Offshore wind energy has been evolving from a niche technology to one that provides a significant share of electricity generation in grid systems across the world1. It has gained momentum due to several advantages over onshore installations such as unrestricted wind flow leading to higher energy yield and better social acceptance. Turbines have grown consistently in terms of rotor diameter size, hub height, and power rating. Numerically designing the wind farm with such large turbines mounted on floating substructures presents a massive challenge in terms of coupled physics and computational power requirements. In this work, we are setting up a multi-physics and multi-fidelity (MPMF) modeling framework using open-source software with, where possible, efficient data exchange across models of varying fidelities. In terms of physics, we account for the aerodynamics of the rotor using different fidelities such as blade element momentum theory, free vortex, and large eddy simulation, the hydrodynamics of the platform using a hybrid approach (potential flow + strip theory), and the highly nonlinear structural dynamics of the flexible components using finite elements. In addition, we account for the controller of the blade pitch and yaw. During our studies, we first simulated NREL 5 MW and IEA 15 MW capacity turbines and validated the results with the available literature data. In this study, the parameters used for free vortex model to simulate aerodynamics were carefully calibrated using large eddy simulations. In the next step, we integrated the dynamic wake meandering approach and atmospheric flow conditions to simulate a coupled multi-physics wind farm scale model with 48 turbines. The spatial configuration of turbines to build the model is taken from the Lillgrund wind farm. All the simulations were performed on the High-Performance-Cluster present at TotalEnergies Houston and Pau. In the future, this MPMF framework will be extensively assessed against the available field data and TotalEnergies prototypes in numerous operating conditions. Further, an extensive sensitivity analysis will be performed to understand the impact of individual physics and parameters on the efficiency of an individual wind turbine in isolation and at a farm scale. References: Jonkman, J. M. (2009). Dynamics of offshore floating wind turbines—model development and verification. Wind Energy: An International Journal for Progress and Applications in Wind Power Conversion Technology, 12(5), 459-492.