Ricerc@Sapienza

In a world in which climate change is at the centre of public debate, most of the CO2 emissions come from energy. Increasing attention is being paid to clean generation, and wind energy still represents one of the leading solutions. In this field, new trends raise new issues, which especially stem from the great dimensions of the wind turbines. Technological limitations force designers to deal with increasingly flexible blades and so the interaction between fluid and structure is expected to play a central role in the design process of wind turbines. The computational study of Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) will thus need refined modelling to obtain sound physical insights. The current project aims to propose a novel FSI model for wind energy applications, where the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach for fluid treatment is coupled with a modal approach for the study of the structural dynamics. In the proposed method, the Actuator Line Model (ALM) provides a representation of the rotor, as well as an interface between fluid and structure. Our approach is expected to start from a linear description of the blade motion to consider then the thorough motion of the blades, including torsion and other changes in airfoil orientation due to elastic deformation. This novel tool would be able to study complex inflows, wake and yawed operations that are critical for the wind turbines of the near future.