Revolutionizing Wind Turbine Design: How Automation is Shaping a Sustainable Future

Wind turbine blade design requires a careful balance between aerodynamic efficiency and structural integrity to ensure optimal performance. Different types of wind turbines, such as Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) and Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs), demand unique blade designs to maximize energy capture. For example, VAWT blades often incorporate curved axes, adding complexity, especially in Darrieus-type turbines. Innovations like the STAR Wind Turbine also use swept blades to enhance energy capture. These designs often require advanced modeling techniques to mitigate issues like tower impacts, underscoring the critical need for sophisticated design approaches.

Traditional Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software, while useful, often relies on significant manual input, which can limit iterative design and optimization processes. This limitation becomes particularly problematic when dealing with advanced coupling approaches like fluid-structure interaction. These advanced approaches require computationally efficient and automated methods to handle the complex interactions between fluid dynamics and structural mechanics effectively. The manual nature of traditional CAD systems can slow down the design process and hinder the exploration of a broader range of design options.

Researchers are developing automated blade generation processes to address the limitations of traditional CAD methods for both VAWTs and HAWTs. For example, Kulbaka’s computer-aided system considers both structural and aerodynamic performance but still requires manual data management across multiple software tools. Other researchers, such as Castelli et al., have detailed processes for creating twisted VAWT blades in a CAD environment, focusing on meshable geometries for Finite Element Method (FEM) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) computations. Pérez-Arribas and Trejo-Vargas presented an approach using B-spline surfaces for straight HAWT blades, while S. F. Hosseini and B. Moetakef-Imani also use B-spline surfaces, aiming for smooth surfaces with minimal curvature variations. While these methods are innovative, they often have limitations, such as being confined to specific blade types or requiring manual data management.

Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) integrates Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Finite Element Method (FEM) by directly reusing CAD geometries in FEM, thereby bypassing traditional meshing processes. This approach offers several advantages, including faster convergence and the need for fewer elements, largely due to its B-spline formulation. Efficient geometry generation is crucial for both FEM and IGA, which emphasizes the necessity of automated methods that leverage NURBS functions to construct diverse blade geometries. The overall goal is to achieve efficient approximation, reduced segmentation, refined profile capabilities, automatic positioning, and the versatility to design both straight and curved blades.

Future efforts in wind turbine innovation will focus on refining automated design methods to further reduce design time and enhance blade performance. These advancements involve leveraging NURBS functions to construct diverse blade geometries, achieving efficient approximation, reduced segmentation, profile refining capabilities, and automated positioning. By streamlining the blade creation process, researchers aim to improve existing turbine designs and facilitate the development of innovative solutions that can meet the increasing demand for sustainable energy. Continued research and development in these areas are essential for maximizing the efficiency and versatility of wind turbine technology.