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Poster Session 4, 2:15 PM - 3:00 PM: Campus Center Auditorium [A81]

Presenter: Margaret Williams

Faculty Sponsor: Sanjay Arwade

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Civil Engineering

ABSTRACT

Offshore wind energy has emerged as a leading solution to the increasing energy demand and climate crisis, and it is imperative to understand the impacts of environmental factors like hurricanes on turbines. When analyzing the impacts of hurricanes on offshore wind turbines, one parameter to consider is the blade positioning and loading impacts. During hurricane events, offshore wind turbine blades are typically idling in a feathered position. Idling cases present complex data and more variable outputs in comparison to a parked blade case. A question arises, therefore, in comparing maximum blade loads and other relevant parameters for both idling and parked blade conditions, to determine whether these cases are similar. This study will investigate this question by modeling the IEA Wind 15-Megawatt Offshore Reference Monopile Wind Turbine during hurricane conditions through OpenFAST. The wind field characteristics that will be evaluated include wind shear, wind veer, and turbulence. Under a few of these varying conditions, it was observed that the extreme values for blade bending moments of the parked and idling cases are similar. These findings suggest that when evaluating these parameters under the specific similar wind field conditions, the parked blade configuration may be used to represent the idling case while under other cases it may not.