Colloquia

Samenvatting

The East and Southeast Asia region has shown a great push towards wind energy in the past decade and has become the largest market for wind turbines. That part of the world is unfortunately subject to multiple typhoons each year, a natural disaster that can destroy entire communities. The word typhoon is the name given to a tropical cyclone in the western Pacific Ocean when wind speeds surpass 119 km/h. The extreme wind speeds that occur in these storms can easily damage or dismantle wind turbines. This represents a huge risk that has to be taken into account when designing a turbine that would be located there.

2B-Energy is a company based in Hengelo which designed and implemented a downwind two-bladed wind turbine, the 2B6 turbine, installed in Eemshaven (The Netherlands). There are multiple benefits of such this turbine compared to more traditional three-bladed upwind turbines. The advantages are mostly related to less material being needed saving costs on manufacturing, transportation and installation.

As the Asian market shows much potential, having a typhoon load management strategy that can preserve the turbine is crucial if a project would be happening in an area prone to tropical cyclones. The strategy considered concerns the position of the rotor during extreme wind speeds, which can be left idling or parked. The difference between both configurations is that the main shaft is completely locked for a parked rotor. In both positions the blades are feathered at a 90 degree angle to limit the aerodynamic forces.

To assess the optimal configuration, aeroelastic simulations were ran to determine which could potentially have the lower loading on the different wind turbine components. For these simulations, different wind fields were generated in order to recreate a typhoon wind field. Some of the parameters implemented in the wind field were based on experimental data of typhoon Yagi from 2024. The parked configuration lead to a large yaw misalignment while the idling configuration caused larger loads. A static rotor position seems to avoid the most extreme loading on the turbine's components. To implement this particular strategy, different design consideration such as the use of an active yaw mechanism need to be further investigated as simply locking the rotor in the current turbine might not be beneficial.