In this paper, a simple but effective trailing edge flap system was proposed. This preliminary concept uses a more practical and stable actuation system which consists of a motor-driven worm gear drive and flexible torsion bar. The flexible torsion bar is designed to be easily twisted while keeping bending rigidity as a sup-port and the worm gear drive not only provides a high torque to overcome aero-dynamic forces on the flap area and the torsional rigidity of the support bar, but also acts as a brake to avoid instability due to the high torsional flexibility of sup-port bar. A preliminary level design study was performed to show the applicability of the new trailing edge flap system for wind turbine rotor blade or helicopter blade.

Abstract. This paper outlines a novel segment test methodology for wind turbine rotor blades. The segment test mainly aims at improving the efficiency of the fatigue test as a future test method at Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES). While resulting in reduced testing times, target fatigue bending moments over the intended test area have to be matched within an acceptable range of overload. The numerical simulation reveals that the proposed segment testing has a significant time savings of up to 43 % and 52 % for 60 and 90 m blades. When compared to the experimental data of a 60 m full-length blade fatigue test, the proposed methodology also shows better test quality over the intended area and better certifiable regions over the outboard area.

This paper presents the recent control technologies being researched for floating offshore wind energy system (FOWES). FOWES has been getting many attentions recently as an alternative energy system utilizing vast sustainable wind resource away from land with little restriction by human societies, artificial and natural obstacles. However, not only due to the harsh environmental conditions such as strong wind, wave, and current, but also due to the platform motions such as surge, sway, heave, pitch, roll, and yaw, there could occur many problems including less energy capture than expected, frequent emergency stops, turbine structural instability, and fatigues resulting in early failures, which stay the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) still high compared to conventional fixed offshore wind energy system. These risks could be lowered by operating the turbine close to the optimum point and harvesting wind energy efficiently even under strong wind conditions with the properly applied control technologies, while reducing the loads on structural components. Many researches have been actively going on not only by numerical approaches, but also by experimental tests. This study is wrapping the most recent researches on control technologies for promising floating offshore wind energy system according to different substructure designs such as a spar type, semi-submergible type, tension-leg platform (TLP) type, and barge type, and discusses about its challenges as well.

The performance of a wind turbine generator (WTG) is highly dependent on the interaction of a rotor blade with complex fluid behaviors, especially the induced vortex structure. In this paper, vortical flows around a blade were first investigated by the unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulation with shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model. It showed that the vortical flows were strongly formed at the blade tip due to the 3D behavior of the boundary layers dominated by pressure gradient. The strong secondary flow was also formed at the near hub due to the Coriolis force and the centrifugal force. At the interacting region of the rotating blade with the tower, the power production was reduced by 22.1% due to the high-pressure fluctuation of the 3P frequency. Based on the close investigation, methods for enhancing the power performance of a WTG were explored, which included the optimization of winglet and ogee design for the blade tip and optimal layout of the nacelle anemometer. The optimized winglet achieved the increase of aerodynamic performance with 0.54%, and the optimal location of the nacelle anemometer was found with a low-turbulence intensity level of 0.003 normalized by the rotor tip speed. The results showed that the traditional anemometer needs to consider the intrinsic flow angle of 11.43° to avoid the loss of aerodynamic performance caused from yaw error.

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