Our aerodynamical design integrates structural design directly and efficiently, to achieve the lowest Levelised Cost Of Energy (LCOE). See here how our engineering design process works.
Our Experience:
We are experts in designing innovative small and medium wind turbine configurations, including vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT). We specialise in technology innovation for large-scale and off-shore wind turbines. Our engineers are experienced in designing whole turbines, wind turbine blade joints, blade root transitions, rotor blade tips, winglets, sectional blades (extendable/ segmented rotor blades) & other related rotor technology.
For more specific questions, contact us.
A leading large-scale wind turbine manufacturers recently hired us for an extensive programme of research into a full scale demonstrator specimen at multi-megawatt scale. This involved concept selection, structural design (including detailed FEA), test specification and test results correlation. Satisfied, they have come back to us for more consultancy.
In the 10MW - 20MW range for offshore wind farms we recently carried out detailed rotor design studies. For this we evaluated upwind/ downwind and two- or three bladed configurations, design for high tip-speeds and related specialist issues (turbine blade erosion protection, high rotor blade flexibility).
Our Design for Wind Turbines:
· Aerofoil selection, modification and blade design from scratch, for HAWT's and VAWT's
· Main blade geometry design and aero-structural trade-offs
· Rotor blade root transition optimisation, thick aerofoils
· Rotor blade tip shaping
· Fine fairing and detailing of wind turbine blade master-model CAD-surfaces
Our Tools:
2D panels methods including inverse aerofoil design
Conventional Blade Element Momentum (BEM) rotor analysis
3D panel methods and volume-based CFD100 million+ cell CFD simulations in OpenFOAM. Aerotrope has in-house high-performance clusters for CFD steady and unsteady simulations with natural transition flow prediction producing 3D full-size wind turbine power coefficient predictions and optimization.
Integrated structural and fluid-dynamic design: CFD using our in-house cluster for OpenFOAM modelling, FEA using Ansys and various coupled aero-elastics analysis methods.
Aerodynamic design and analysis using lower order methods like lifting line and panel methods.
These are just examples of our capabilities. Please contact us direcly about any aerodynamical wind turbine design issues that are not covered here.
