Aero-structural design and optimization of 50 MW wind turbine with over 250-m blades

Abstract

The quest for reduced levelized cost of energy has driven significant growth in wind turbine size; however, larger rotors face significant technical and logistical challenges. The largest published rotor design is 25 MW, and here we consider an even larger 50 MW design with blade length over 250 m. This paper shows that a 50 MW design is indeed possible from a detailed engineering perspective and presents a series of aero-structural blade designs, and critical assessment of technology pathways and challenges for extreme-scale rotors. The 50 MW rotor design begins with Monte Carlo simulations focused on optimizing carbon spar cap and root design. A baseline design resulted in a 250-m blade with mass of 502 tonnes. Subsequently, an aero-structural design and optimization were performed to reduce the blade mass/cost with more than 25% mass reduction and 30% cost reduction by determining optimal blade chord and airfoil thickness for best aero-structural performance.

Rapid approach for structural design of the tower and monopile for a series of 25 MW offshore turbines

“…The base of the model is fully constrained and is consistent with the boundary condition used in the optimization. The models for the tower and monopile for the different turbine versions studied are built using AutoNuMAD [19,20,21,9,7,22].…”

“…These are current prototypes or are scheduled to deliver the first prototype within the next three years [1]. Some examples developed by universities and research entities are: the IEA 15 MW reference wind turbine developed though the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Task 37 working group that is also an offshore, three-bladed and upwind that has models for both floating and fixed-bottom configurations [6], and the Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR) project with two-bladed downwind turbine designs of 13.2 MW [7], 25 MW [8] and 50 MW [9]. The Segmented Outboard Articulating Rotor (SOAR) project is a continuation of SUMR and is focused on the study of 25 MW HAWTs, offshore and fixed-bottom designs illustrated in Figure 1.…”

Design and analysis of a segmented blade for a 50 MW wind turbine rotor

“…The design characteristics of the monolithic 250 m blade for the 50 MW turbine are presented herein (Yao et al, 2021b). The structural version S5 is summarized in Table 1 and meets international design standards used by the global wind energy industry to ensure the safety and reliability of the blade structure.…”

“…The structural version S5 is summarized in Table 1 and meets international design standards used by the global wind energy industry to ensure the safety and reliability of the blade structure. An analysis of multiple design load cases (DLC’s) by Yao et al (2021b) shows that the critical case for this blade design is DLC 2.3. The bending moment and shear force distributions of this critical case are shown in Figure 8.…”

“…The SUMR-13i 13.2 MW design with 104.35 m long blades is one example that shows the improvement in performance and reduction in mass compared to conventional three-bladed rotor designs (Pao et al, 2021; Yao et al, 2021a). The SUMR50-S5 50 MW is largest member of the SUMR design family with 250 m long blades that weight over 500 metric tons each (Yao et al, 2021b). However, such extreme blade lengths cannot be manufactured and transported over land with current technology and may require segmenting the blades to make the design feasible with reference to manufacturing and transportation.…”