Load reduction of wind turbines using trailing edge flaps

Model Predictive Control of Trailing Edge Flaps on a Wind Turbine Blade

Trailing Edge Flaps on wind turbine blades have been studied in order to achieve fatigue load reduction on the turbine components. We show in this paper how Model Predictive Control can be used to do frequency weighted control of the trailing edge flaps in order to reduce fatigue damage on the blade root. The design model is based on a modal model of the blade structure and a steady state aerod...

An investigation of unsteady 3D effects on trailing edge flaps

The present study investigates the impact of unsteady and viscous three-dimensional aerodynamic effects on a wind turbine blade with trailing edge flap by means of CFD. Harmonic oscillations are simulated on the DTU 10 MW rotor with a flap of 10% chord extent ranging from 70% to 80% blade radius. The deflection frequency is varied in the range between 1p and 6p. To quantify 3D effects, rotor si...

A Comparison of Smart Rotor Control Approaches Using Trailing Edge Flaps and Individual Pitch Control

Modern wind turbines have been steadily increasing in size, and have now become very large, with recent models boasting rotor diameters greater than 120 m. Reducing the loads experienced by the wind turbine rotor blades is one means of lowering the cost of energy of wind turbines. Wind turbines are subjected to significant and rapid fluctuating loads, which arise from a variety of sources inclu...

Aerodynamic Analysis of Trailing Edge Enlarged Wind Turbine Airfoils

Effect of Smart Rotor Control Using a Deformable Trailing Edge Flap on Load Reduction under Normal and Extreme Turbulence

This paper presents a newly developed aero-servo-elastic platform for implementing smart rotor control and shows its effectiveness with aerodynamic loads on large-scale offshore wind turbines. The platform was built by improving the FAST/Aerodyn codes with the integration of an external deformable trailing edge flap controller in the Matlab/Simulink software. Smart rotor control was applied to ...