Coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulation of Two-Blade Wind Turbine

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.