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When it comes to design a wind turbine rotor, several parameters have to be taken into account. The present work focuses on the inclination of the blades with respect to the rotor plane, namely the pich angle. The main goal of the project was to design a small-scale wind turbine rotor for wind tunnel tests and in this thesis the optimization of a first prototype is presented. The characterization of the performances was carried out by coupling two different approaches: an experimental and a numerical one. For the experimental part, a proper setup was built and the wind turbine model was tested in a wind tunnel. The results were compared with a Blade Element Momentum theory code developed in Python, that involved also CFD simulations to assess the aerodynamic properties of the blade sections. The analysis characterized the performances at variable collective pitch in terms of power and thrust coefficient, showing that the intitial blade design was not the optimal one. Therefore, the optimal pitch angle that maximize the power porduction was found for variable conditions. The second part of the experiments focused on the case of pitch unbalanced and the potential risks connected to it. As a result, the analysis demonstrated that any kind of pitch unbalance generates losses in the power production and may lead to a possible increase of the thrust. To compare the results, a modified BEM code was developed by assuming an axisymmetric axial induction factor. Finally, an additional analysis on the wind turbine oscillations was made, finding a connection between lateral vibrations and rotor unbalance and revealing the resonance frequency of the structure.

A new vortex model for wind turbines was developed in order to evaluate the loads at the blades and other important characteristics of interest for the wind industry such as power and thrust coefficients. Nowadays, the calculation of these quantaties is done in a reliable and precise manner with LES simulation using actuator line or actuator disk models. However, LES simulations are computationally heavy and the model here developed aims at calculating the same quantities of interest in less time but still giving reliable and accurate results for any wind turbine model. The idea of a vortex model for wind turbines was developed by Segalini & Aöfredsson, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 725, pages 91-116, 2013, using vortex filaments to reproduce the vorticity on the blades and in the wake. Nevertheless, that model had some limitations, among which, the main one, was the impossibility to simluate wind turbines with varying circulation along the blade, something that is always present in reality. With this thesis it is proposed a model based on the one of Segalini & Alfredsson (2013) but with the introduction of a vortex sheet that allows to simulate a vorticity release from the wind turbine blades and hence wind turbines with varying circulation along the blades. The model was validated against a LES simulation of the Tjaereborg wind turbine by Sarmast, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2014, that utilized an actuator line model. The results confirmed the improvement of the vortex model compared to the previous one of Segalini & Alfredsson (2013) and gave consistent results regarding the flow field at the rotor plane and the loads on the blades.

Wind energy is one of the most promising sources of renewable energy. Unfortunately, therapid growth in wind turbine technology is not equally at par with the improvement in itsreliability. Wind turbine systems tend to fail before their design life and hence result in asizeable amount of failure cost. A lack of reliable data has plagued the reliability and risk assessment of wind turbines in the scientific community. Many efforts have been made to estimate the failure probability of these systems and highlight the critical failure modes. However, there is a knowledge gap in quantifying the effect of the root cause of failure. This thesis work bridges this gap by developing a reliability analysis tool that quantifes the impact of a root failure cause, based on the resultant cost of failure. Furthermore, an attempt to quantify the importance of tribology in wind turbines is made. The model uses two independent reliability estimation methods - Fault Tree Analysis and Failure Mode and Effect Analysis. The two resulting approaches are used to prove the model's versatility and ease of adaptation of the model in the industry. Furthermore, with the inclusion of 'Reliability Influencing Factors', this model can calculate the overall potential economic gain from improving one or multiple properties of a component. The report then illustrates one of the industrial use cases of the model. With wind turbine gearbox as a representative assembly, tribology's quantitative importance is depicted against the Levelised Cost of Energy. It is concluded that a 2.5% decrease in energy cost can be achieved with just a 5% improvement in wind turbine gearbox tribology. / Vindenergi är en av de mest lovande källorna för förnybar energi. Tyvärr matchas inte den hastiga utvecklingen i vindturbinteknologi med en likvärding utveckling i dess pålitlighet. Vindturbinsystem tenderar att fallera tidigare än designats för, vilket resulterar i en betydande falleringskostnad. En avsaknad av tillförlitlig data har hindrat utvärderingen av påalitlighet och risk för vindturbiner. Många ansträngningar har gjorts för att estimera sannolikheten att dessa system ska fallera och att lyfta fram de kritiska fellägena. Däremot finns det en kunskapsbrist när det kommer till att kvantifiera effekten av den grundläggandeorsaken till fallering. Denna avhandling minskar denna brist genom att utveckla ett verktyg för pålitlighetsanalys som kvantifierar effekten av en falleringsorsak baserat på den resulterande kostnaden för fallering. Vidare görs ett försök att kvantifiera vikten av tribologi i vindturbiner. Modellen använde två oberoende metoder för estimering av pålitlighet - Fault Tree Analysis and Failure ode and Effect Analysis. De två resulterande angreppssätten används för att påvisa hur anpassbar modellen är och hur lätt modellen kan användas i industrin. Vidare, med inklusionen av 'Reliability Influencing Factors' kan modellen beräkna den övergripande potentiella ekonomiska vinningen från att förbättra en eller flera delar av en komponent. Rapporten illustrerar sedan en av de industriella användningsområdena av modellen. Med en vindturbins växellåda som representativt exempel påvisas den kvantitativa vikten av tribologi mot 'the Levelised Cost of Energy'. Slutsatsen dras sedan att en 2.5% minskning i energiförbrukning för konsumenten kan nås med endast en 5% förbättring av tribologin i en vindurbins växellåda.

The object of this thesis is to develop a cost effective direct-driven wind generator suited for offshore wind turbines. As the generator price is a complicated function dependent on many parameters, the emphasis is mainly put on reduction of the weight of active materials, such as copper, laminated steel, permanent magnets, and electrical insulation. The higher specific torque and power density of a transverse flux permanent magnet (TFPM) machine in comparison to conventional radial-flux machines make it a promising solution for direct-driven wind turbine generators. The novel TFPM generator investigated in this work due to its possibly more compact construction would allow a better utilization of the available nacelle space. The analytical model, including evaluation of the synchronous inductance, is developed and applied in parametric study of a 5 MW wind turbine generator. The influence of the design variables with respect to the analyzed characteristics is investigated. A number of machines that have approximately the same performances are found. These machines are compared and the optimal ranges for the main parameters are suggested. One possible design topology is presented in more details with dimensions and main characteristics. This generator is compared with radial-flux generators with surface-mounted and tangentially-polarized magnets. It is found that the analyzed TFPM generator would favor a smaller outer diameter, reduced total active weight, and reduced weight of the magnet material. The TFPM would however require a longer axial length. TFPM generators with a broader range of output power have also been investigated. Generators rated 3, 5, 7, 10, and 12 MW are analyzed and their characteristics with respect to the output power are compared. The novel transverse flux topology has been found to be promising for low-speed hightorque applications, such as direct-driven wind turbines in the multi-megawatt range. / QC 20101118

The finite element methods (FEM) have been developed over decades, and together with the growth of computer engineering, they become more and more important in solving large-scale problems in science and industry. The objective of this thesis is to develop high-performance finite element methods (HP-FEM), with two main applications in mind: computational diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and simulation of the turbulent flow past a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). In the first application, we develop an efficient high-performance finite element framework HP-PUFEM based on a partition of unity finite element method to solve the Bloch-Torrey equation in heterogeneous domains. The proposed framework overcomes the difficulties that the standard approaches have when imposing the microscopic heterogeneity of the biological tissues. We also propose artificial jump conditions at the external boundaries to approximate the pseudo-periodic boundary conditions which allows for the water exchange at the external boundaries for non-periodic meshes. The framework is of a high level simplicity and efficiency that well facilitates parallelization. It can be straightforwardly implemented in different FEM software packages and it is implemented in FEniCS for moderate-scale simulations and in FEniCS-HPC for the large-scale simulations. The framework is validated against reference solutions, and implementation shows a strong parallel scalability. Since such a high-performance simulation framework is still missing in the field, it can become a powerful tool to uncover diffusion in complex biological tissues. In the second application, we develop an ALE-DFS method which combines advanced techniques developed in recent years to simulate turbulence. We apply a General Galerkin (G2) method which is continuous piecewise linear in both time and space, to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for a rotating turbine in an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) framework. This method is enhanced with dual-based a posterior error control and automated mesh adaptation. Turbulent boundary layers are modeled by a slip boundary condition to avoid a full resolution which is impossible even with the most powerful computers available today. The method is validated against experimental data of parked turbines with good agreements. The thesis presents contributions in the form of both numerical methods for high-performance computing frameworks and efficient, tested software, published open source as part of the FEniCS-HPC platform. / <p>QC 20180411</p>