Shape optimization of wind turbine rotors with uncertainties on some geometrical parameters

What is it about?

The contribution describes an optimization method to design the shape of horizontal axis wind turbine rotors, considering as a performance index the variability of the annual energy production due to the uncertainty of the blade geometry caused by manufacturing and assembly errors. The energy production of a rotor designed with the proposed robust (less sensitive to uncertainties) optimization approach features lower sensitivity to stochastic geometry errors with respect to that of a rotor designed with the conventional deterministic optimization approach that ignores these errors. Results highlight that, for the considered turbine type, the sensitivity of the annual energy production to rotor geometry errors can be reduced by reducing the rotational speed and increasing the blade loading. The primary objective of the paper is to highlight how to incorporate an efficient and accurate uncertainty propagation strategy (propagation of uncertainties through the numerical model) in wind turbine design. The formulation of the considered design problem does not include all the engineering constraints adopted in real turbine design, but the proposed probabilistic design strategy is fairly independent of the problem definition and can be easily extended to turbine design systems of any complexity.

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