Sandia presents several wind energy papers at AIAA SciTech conference

Three members of Sandia National Laboratories’ Wind Energy Technologies department presented technical papers at the AIAA SciTech 2016 conference in San Diego. Over 3500 participants attended the 5-day conference—which co-locates 12 technical conferences, including the 34th ASME Wind Energy Symposium—allowing for many cross-disciplinary exchanges. Sandia’s research overlaps significantly with the research community’s interest in several areas related to wind turbine wakes and wind farm analysis including, but not limited to, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses and methods, mid-fidelity vortex methods, atmospheric coupling to large wind farm simulations and vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs).

Chris Kelley presented Scaled Aerodynamic Wind Turbine Design for Wake Similarity on the aerodynamic design of the National Rotor Testbed blades to fly at SWiFT. These blades were designed with a newly developed inverse design methodology whereby the created wake is the scaled wake of a utility, commercial-sized wind turbine.

Tommy Herges updated participants on the Sandia Wake Imaging System (SWIS) velocity measurement tool, describing the setup and results from the demonstration field test campaign at the SWiFT facility in July 2015. SWIS will improve the spatial and temporal resolution capabilities of velocity measurements within wind farms. Velocity images of the inflow wind velocity were safely and successfully acquired during the demonstration field test that compared well with measurement predictions. The software tool developed to model the physics of SWIS will be used to plan future experiments. Based on feedback from high-fidelity modelers, the SWIS team will refine the system to provide data for future verification and validation efforts of CFD codes.

David Maniaci, in collaboration with Sven Schmitz of Pennsylvania State University, presented a paper on an improved tip-loss model for highly-loaded wind turbines: Analytical Method to Determine a Tip Loss Factor for Highly-Loaded Wind Turbine Rotors.

At the ASME Wind Energy Technical Committee meeting, Committee members elected Todd Griffith as the new Chair of the ASME Wind Energy Technical Committee.

Professor Lance Manuel and his University of Texas students presented a paper, co-authored by members of the Sandia Wind and Water Power departments, on developing a standard model for a floating offshore 13.2 MW horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) using the Sandia 100m blade.

Sandia partner Montana State University researchers presented two papers on fiber reinforced polymer composite materials and mechanics: Fracture and Fatigue of Thick Adhesive Joints in Wind Turbine Blade Structures (AIAA 2016-0755) and Influence of Fabric Architecture on Damage Progression Evidenced by Acoustic Emission Measurements (AIAA 2016-0756).

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
aiaa.org