Development of small domestic wind turbine tower and blades systems: An optimization approach

Abstract

Building up a clean energy future has been recognized as one of the great challenges of our time. To deal with this challenge, a comprehensive new energy plan was developed, which demands some percent of our electricity to be utilized from renewable resources. An assured use of electricity from renewable resources, such as wind, along with the latest deployment of large turbines that grow to great heights, makes achieving the most efficient and safe designs of the structures that support them incredibly. In attaining this goal, the present work inquires to understand how optimization concepts and suitable optimization capabilities can be involved in wind turbine blades and tower design. Furthermore, this work spread out on the work of previous researchers to study how considering the tower as an integral system, where imperfect rigid tower support conditions are in place, which impacts the optimal design. Exclusively, the originated optimization problems are solved with and without consideration of effect of wind velocity, wind direction, deflections, ensuing from the foundation’s rotational and horizontal stiffness, on natural frequency calculations. The general methodology used to transliterate the design of domestic wind turbine blades and towers into an optimization problem embrace information on design requirements and parameter values. The objective function is to consider the sum of the tower and blades material and fabrication cost. Reducing the frequency drastically reduces material usage. Prominent conclusion from this work comprises of optimization concepts, optimization capabilities and analysis that may be evolved from reasonable conceptual level designs.