Abstract
Renewable wind energy towers are gradually increasing in both size and in the harshness of their operating environments, heightening the impracticality of full-scale testing and optimization. Computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis plays a key role during wind turbine design processes to estimate the performance and resilience of these structures subject to transient aerodynamic forces and moments. Rocstar Multiphysics is presented here as an open-source FSI software suited for simulating such problems in the renewable energy sector. This software enables high-fidelity two-way coupled FSI analysis by linking a pair of third-party open-source fluid and structural solvers. Here, we describe our developments modernizing Rocstar Multiphysics’s legacy code base. In this work, we focus on ongoing efforts to validate the coupled solver, specifically using data from the NREL Phase VI two-blade wind turbine experiment. Broadly, the verification of this open-source software will yield a full-fledged computational package to reliably solve fully coupled FSI multiphysics problems in the wind energy industry.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | AIAA SciTech Forum 2022 |
| Publisher | American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781624106316 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, AIAA SciTech Forum 2022 - San Diego, United States Duration: Jan 3 2022 → Jan 7 2022 |
Publication series
| Name | AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, AIAA SciTech Forum 2022 |
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Conference
| Conference | AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, AIAA SciTech Forum 2022 |
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| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | San Diego |
| Period | 01/3/22 → 01/7/22 |
Funding
This work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science SBIR grant No. DE-SC0018481. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Here, we expand on the developments and applicability of our open-source Rocstar Multiphysics software, hereafter referred to as Rocstar, towards FSI simulation of wind turbines. This software, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, was originally developed at the University of Illinois Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets. Rocstar was built for multiphysical coupled simulation of advanced solid fuel rockets, though in recent years, Rocstar has undergone developments to “modernize” the code base and pivot its simulation capabilities towards clean energy systems. These developments aim to support the design, verification, and uncertainty analysis of clean energy power plants. Rocstar has been used in numerous massively-parallel computing applications overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, academic institutions, and other engineering clients. The pivot towards hosting an open-source FSI platform was motivated by the growing wind energy sector and lack of accessible open-source software offerings. In detailing the technicalities of Rocstar in the following section, we choose to only focus on the portions of it that are relevant to FSI.