Design and experimental testing of a large-scale wind turbine model installed on a floating structure

Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) are recognized both by academia and industry as a potential solution to reduce the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCoE) of wind energy and as the key technology to exploit the high-quality wind resource available far from coastal areas. Installing a FOWT on a multi-purpose platform (MPP) instead of a traditional floater can bring advantages, such as the sharing of the infrastructure among the onboard Offshore Renewable Energy subsystems. In this scenario, the H2020 funded "The Blue Growth Farm" project aims at developing an offshore farm that combines aquaculture with wave energy converters and a wind turbine. The development of the MPP concept is going to be supported by experimental data collected on a 1:15 model deployed at the Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory (NOEL) in Reggio Calabria (Italy). Considering the MPPs low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and the high complexity, model testing is indeed of fundamental importance. In particular, large scale models deployed in a natural outdoor environment are a valid complement in understanding the real features of the system and in updating or validating codes. Focusing on wind turbines, adopting a large scale allows to better reproduce the aerodynamic behaviour of the rotor, that in laboratory scale experiments is usually impaired by low-Reynolds effects. In this framework, the present work focuses on the design, testing and validation of a large-scale wind turbine model, based on the DTU 10MW reference wind turbine, installed on the scaled MPP. The strategies adopted to scale the reference wind turbine in order to represent both the main aeroelastic features and all the functionalities of a real machine are discussed. The aerodynamic, structural and mechatronic design of the turbine model are explored. The first step in the experimental testing is the validation of the model itself. It is essential to assess the effective aerodynamic characteristics of the rotor in order to understand if the physical model is well respecting the properties requested in the design phase. Particular care is put in the correct reproduction of the operating parameters as part of the assessment of the control system.

Il presente lavoro è parte del progetto europeo H2020 The Blue Growth Farm e si concentra su progettazione, sperimentazione e validazione di una turbina eolica modello installata su un modello scalato di piattaforma multi-purpose e testato nel laboratorio naturale NOEL a Reggio Calabria (IT).