Use Case 1: Overview, Objectives and HPC Application

Definition of the Use Case

The NREL 5 MW baseline wind turbine is selected as the reference use case for wall-resolved fluid-structure interaction (FSI) studies lead by Imperial College London (ICL). In addition to the FSI studies, it also sets a common ground to leverage the results of algorithms being developed in HPCWE for wind turbine simulation at turbine level and to showcase the advantages provided by state-of-the-art HPC simulation for the following objectives being pursued individually and collaboratively by ICL, USP, UTwente, USTUTT and EPCC.

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NREL 5 MW reference wind turbine | Simulation by Marielle de Oliveira using OpenFOAM; (c) Universidade de Sรฃo Paulo

Main Objectives

  • Accurate prediction of blade deformations and fatigue loads under realistic high-wind flow conditions.
  • A numerical strategy for the prediction of edgewise vibrations on parked rotors without empirical corrections.
  • A wall-resolved simulation environment to investigate the aerodynamic/aeroelastic interactions at the rotor level driven by separated flows on blade root, nacelle and tower.
  • Assessment and demonstration of importance of extra resolution of high-fidelity simulation as well as the role of local resolutions of the model via comparison to the more approximate and low-fidelity approaches.
  • Investigation of incoming flow turbulence level on the wake and mean-velocity profile recovery in wind farm.
  • Investigation of effect of motions of turbine platform in offshore wind turbines on the local flow around the blade and wake.
  • Providing deeper understanding of wake and sea waves.
  • I/O reduction using compression algorithms.
  • Energy usage assessment and reduction using an energy-aware programming approach.

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HPC Application

This use case also serves as a common test case for analysis and demonstration of individual and comparative scalability of algorithms and codes. HPC performance and scalability tests and analysis are being conducted on EPCCโ€™s NextGenIO and UK national supercomputing systems by each partner individually as well as in collaboration with EPCC.