Aeroelastic response of horizontal-axis wind turbine in sudden wind gusts based on Unsteady Blade Element-Momentum method

Wind turbines are subject to various unsteady aerodynamic effects. This includes the wind gust and the change of wind direction. In this work, the aeroelastic behavior of a reference horizontal axis wind turbine has been investigated under different wind gusts and yaw conditions. Unsteady blade element momentum (UBEM) theory and Euler-Bernoulli beam assumption were used to rotor power estimations. To take into account the time delay in aerodynamic loads due to a sudden change in inflow conditions, a dynamic wake model was implemented. The ONERA dynamic stall model was coupled into the BEM theory to improve the aerodynamic loads prediction in the unsteady inflow and yaw conditions. To verify this method, the results in the case of steady-state are compared with the NREL 5 MW wind turbine and in the unsteady case are compared with the Tjaereborg test turbine. The results indicate that sudden change in wind speed causes sharp fluctuations in terms of elastic torsion of the blade and other parameters such as rotor power. Increasing in wind gradient can leads to increasing time delay to a new equilibrium. The increase in yaw angle can be contributed to the rotor power and the periodic loads reduction. The method presented here may facilitate improvements in the controller design for wind turbines.