Notice of Intent: Fundamental Aerodynamics for Offshore Wind Performance and Reliability

Modern offshore wind turbines are the largest rotating machines ever built by humankind. As the scale of commercial wind turbine size increases, so does the risk to the investment in development and the reliability and performance expectations from the larger designs.

The intended RFP would seek applications from U.S. industry and academia to provide the necessary data and analysis for validating and developing tools used in the design and development of very large commercial wind turbine rotors, accelerating the development and deployment of cost-effective offshore wind technology.

Specifically, NREL, seeks to address the lack of high-quality, open-source experimental data on the aerodynamic behavior of wind turbine airfoils in operation at high Reynolds numbers that are representative of the high wind speeds and large sizes of rotor blades in wind turbines of approximately 10–15 megawatts (MW) and beyond.

At these scales, another problem is the uncertainty and magnitude of loads on wind turbine blades when the turbine is idling or parked for installation, maintenance, or during the passage of extreme weather events. In such situations, the ability of current simulation techniques to accurately characterize the unsteady, three-dimensional (3D) aerodynamic/aeroelastic behaviors is also unvalidated. As a result, turbine designs can either be overly conservative—hence, expensive—or can risk damage in certain wind conditions.