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At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Blade Coating Inverted Perovskite Solar Cells with Vacuum-Assisted Nucleation Based on Bottom Quasi-2D Passivation

Metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) attract an enormous attention because of their high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and low fabrication cost. However, their commercialization is limited by fabricating highly efficient large-area solar cells. Controlling the morphology and crystallization of perovskite for large-area fabrication is difficult but important. Here, in this work, a vacuum-assisted approach is developed to obtain mirror-like, pinhole-free, highly crystalline, and uniform blade-coated perovskite films, without the use of antisolvent and air knife. This method can be a universal approach for various perovskite compositions. Meanwhile, the phenethylammonium iodide passivation effect at the top and bottom interfaces of perovskite layer based on FTO/NiO x /perovskite/C 60 /BCP/Cu inverted p-i-n structure is systematically investigated. The optimized device fabricated by blade coating under an ambient environment exhibits the champion PCE of 20.7% and is among the top few records of blade coating inverted structure based on NiOx hole transport layer. The encapsulated device retains 97% of its maximum efficiency under open-circuit condition after 1000 h of photostability test in an ambient environment at room temperature with a relative humidity of 40–60%. Herein, low-cost, easy, and reproducible strategies to fabricate efficient and stable blade-coated PSCs are demonstrated.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Blade planform design optimization to enhance turbine wake control

Abstract This study considers optimizing the planform of wind turbine blades to ultimately enhance wind plant controls, namely, wake steering strategies. Adjoint‐enabled unsteady actuator line simulations are carried out to obtain gradients for optimization of several different performance objectives with respect to blade chord length at 10 locations along blade span. We demonstrate different blade design optimizations that can maximize time‐averaged lateral wake deflection, entrainment of kinetic energy, or total power of multiple turbines. Our optimized designs can produce a 4+% increase in wake deflection, a 4× increase in vertical kinetic energy entrainment, or a 3.6% increase in power when compared with the baseline case. While lateral wake deflection is only modestly sensitive to chord changes, we find that increasing the outboard chord length can dramatically increase kinetic energy entrainment, resulting in faster wake recovery and gains in net power. While this work develops only a few case studies emphasizing relative performance improvements and general trends, these results show the promise of a framework that combines mid‐fidelity computation with adjoint‐based optimization for control and design problems.

WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Regional Representation of Wind Stakeholders' End-of-Life Behaviors and Their Impact on Wind Blade Circularity

Wind plant power has seen tremendous growth in the US and worldwide, representing the most significant renewable energy installed capacity besides hydropower. While wind power enables decarbonizing the electricity grid, the rising amount of end-of-life (EOL) wind blades - which are arduous to recycle - present a challenge for landfills if disposed of whole and a missed opportunity to recover valuable composite materials. The circular economy (CE) concept proposes strategies to rethink, reuse and recover products, components, and materials. However, transitioning to a CE implies changing how business models, supply chains, and behaviors deal with products and waste; changes arduously captured with traditional methods used to assess circularity such as life cycle assessment or material flow analysis (MFA). Here we present an agent-based model (ABM) that captures behavioral aspects impacting wind blade circularity in the US. The ABM also accounts for wind plant projects and landfills heterogeneity - a characteristic not easily included in top-down approaches such as MFA, input-output analysis, or system dynamics. Results show that recycling is divided as most recycling facilities are on the eastern side of the country, a challenge that could be alleviated by shredding blades before transportation. Recycling programs from the wind industry could also seed recycling behaviors within wind plant owners. Better yet, new blade designs could increase circularity if original equipment manufacturers accept the risks involved with the investments needed to adapt the production lines.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Numerical simulation of vortex-induced vibration response of a single IEA 10-MW wind turbine blade

Three-dimensional simulation of vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a single International Energy Agency (IEA) 10-MW reference wind turbine blade with a length of 97.325 m is performed using the ExaWind stack, an open-source suite of codes. This study aims to illustrate the spanwise VIV response characteristics and cross-validate the results with an existing commercial framework. Five near-body meshes and three time steps are selected for the convergence study. To improve computational efficiency, several VIV triggering methods are also compared to shorten the VIV development period. The ExaWind-based VIV simulation strategy for a single IEA 10-MW blade is determined. First, the modal shape is validated against published results. Then, spanwise VIV responses of four blade configurations under a fixed and varied incoming flow velocity are analyzed. Results show that the VIV response is dominated by the first edgewise (second overall) mode. Little first-mode contributions appear near the second-mode node, producing a pi phase jump, and a higher harmonics response occurs near the blade root. Rotational degrees of freedom are minor compared with translational motion. The response versus reduced velocity is analyzed, showing a two-branch behavior similar to that of VIV for a bluff cylinder. Across all tested cases, the dominant frequency remains locked to the natural frequency of the second mode with no observed desynchronization. A mild deviation is observed for the case of 90-degree pitch and 310-degree azimuth rotation near a reduced velocity of 6, which will be examined with additional cases in future work. These findings indicate that severe VIV responses can arise under specific configurations and flow conditions, thereby increasing the potential for VIV fatigue damage and requiring greater attention during operation.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Autonomous Sensor System for Wind Turbine Blade Collision Detection

This paper presents an automated blade collision detection system for use on wind turbines, toward the goal of supporting monitoring and quantitative assessment of wind energy impacts on wildlife. A wireless, multisensor module mounted at the blade root measures surface vibrations, and a blade-mounted camera provides image capture of colliding objects. Using sensor data recorded during field testing of the system on an operational wind turbine, we present the development, training, and testing of automated detection algorithms for collision detection using machine-learning approaches. In particular, we compare the use of a new two-step, anomaly-based classification algorithm with conventional adaptive boosting and amplitude-based detection techniques, where the two-step approach improves average precision for the experimental data set. This integrated sensor and classification systems demonstrates a new approach for automated, on-blade collision detection for wind turbines, with broad utility across structural health monitoring applications.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Blade Designs For Improved Multi-Phase Performance In sCO 2 Compressors; Part II - Optical Diagnostics In sCO 2 And Experimental Evaluation With Particle Image Velocimetry

This paper presents the second part of a study in which the leading-edge and suction surface of a compressor blade was modified to delay onset of phase change for sCO 2 compressors operating near the critical point. Using a first-of-its-kind apparatus for the measurement of sCO 2 flow fields, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is used for local flow field measurements of two compressor blade geometries: the modified “biased-wedge,” and a conventional constant thickness blade. Utilizing the developed hardware, the feasibility of a simple, laser-based diagnostic for qualitatively measuring liquid phase regions, is also presented. The design of the optical diagnostics rig, a discussion of numerous challenges, and necessary considerations involved in performing optical-based measurements like PIV, in sCO 2 , are discussed. Velocity field measurements for the modified compressor profile show a much lower suction peak compared to a conventional blade. Furthermore, these results validate numerical results at the tested conditions, where the suction side profile of the biased wedge works to minimize the local pressure gradient.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Characterization and repair of core gap manufacturing defects for wind turbine blades

Various wind turbine blade components, such as shear webs and skins, commonly use fiber-reinforced composite sandwich structures with a core material like balsa or foam. During manufacturing, core gap defects may result from the misalignment of adjacent foam or balsa core sheets in the blade mold. It is important to understand the influence that core gaps have on the structural integrity of wind turbine blades and how to mitigate their influence. This research characterized the effects of core gap defects at the manufacturing and mechanical levels for both epoxy and next-generation thermoplastic composites. Common repair methods were assessed and compared. Multiple defect sizes were compared using temperature data gathered with thermocouples embedded during manufacturing to core gap defect characteristics obtained using image-mapping techniques, optical microscopy, and mechanical characterization by long beam flexure. Results showed that peak exothermic temperatures during curing were closely related to core gap size. The long beam flexure tests determined that transverse core gaps under pure bending loads can have a substantial effect on the ultimate facesheet strength of both epoxy and thermoplastic composite sandwich structures (up to 25% strength reduction), although the size of the defect itself had less of an influence on the magnitude of the strength reduction. The supporting image-mapping techniques indicated that the distortion of the composite facesheets by the core gaps contributed to the premature failures. The repair methods used in this study did very little to improve the ultimate strength of the sandwich panels that previously had core gap defects. The repair of the thermoplastic panel resulted in a further loss in ultimate facesheet strength. This research demonstrated that there is a vital need for the development of a compatible thermoplastic polymer repair resin system and appropriate resin specific repair procedures for the next generation of recyclable thermoplastic wind blades.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Toward the Advanced Manufacturing of Land-Based Wind Turbine Blades

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and General Electric (GE) are partners within the Additive and Modular-Enabled Rotor Blades and Integrated Composites Assembly (AMERICA) project. AMERICA aims to develop advanced manufacturing solutions to reduce labor and cycle time while increasing recyclability of wind turbine blades. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office. This paper describes the techno-economic and life cycle analysis of the novel manufacturing process applied to the 15-meter long tip of the blade of a representative 3.4 MW land-based wind turbine. We establish a comparison to a standard manufacturing process, highlighting challenges and opportunities. Several uncertainties affect the analysis, but we highlight an opportunity space. With the current set of assumptions, the tip adopting advanced manufacturing is predicted to lower labor by 21%, cycle time by 39%, and total blade tip costs by 15% while simultaneously increasing production quality and adopting recyclable thermoplastic resin. A life cycle analysis returns comparable metrics for climate change impact and embodied energy between the two processes.

3D printing↗
DOE OSTI2022

Toward the Advanced Manufacturing of Land-Based Wind Turbine Blades: Preprint

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and General Electric (GE) are partners within the Additive and Modular Enabled Rotor Blades and Integrated Composites Assembly (AMERICA) project. AMERICA aims to develop advanced manufacturing solutions to reduce labor and cycle time while increasing recyclability of wind turbine blades. The project is funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This paper describes the techno-economic analysis of the novel manufacturing process applied to the tip of the blade of a representative land-based wind turbine. A comparison to a standard manufacturing process is established, highlighting challenges and opportunities. Several uncertainties affect the analysis, but with the current set of assumptions, the tip adopting advanced manufacturing is predicted to lower labor by 21%, cycle time by 39%, and total blade tip costs by 15% while simultaneously increasing production quality and adopting recyclable thermoplastic resin.

3D printing↗
DOE OSTI2024

Techno‐Economic Analysis of Additively‐Manufactured Wind Turbine Blade Tips That Enable Technology Integration

The Additively‐Manufactured, System‐Integrated Tip (AMSIT) project is leveraging the flexibility of 3D printing to integrate several technologies in a wind turbine blade tip, while reducing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) produced. The design integration is demonstrated for a 200‐kW–scale turbine with 13‐m blades, with the outer 15% of the blade replaced with a 3D‐printed design. Aerodynamic performance is enhanced without increasing swept area through inclusion of a winglet and surface texturing, both challenging for traditional manufacturing. Longevity and durability are improved through integrated lightning and leading edge erosion protection. Increased power, reduced repair frequency, and ease of repair through blade modularity all contribute to reduced LCOE. The analysis is also extended to modern MW‐scale designs to estimate the impact of the technology at scale, demonstrating the potential to reduce LCOE significantly for modern onshore turbines, with even higher potential savings offshore.

3D printing↗
DOE OSTI2021

Controlling Polymer Morphology in Blade-Coated All-Polymer Solar Cells

In this report translating all-polymer solar cells from spin-coating to scalable roll-to-roll-compatible fabrication techniques is a critical step toward the application of organic photovoltaics at a scale. Techniques to control polymer crystallization and phase separation during solution printing are essential to obtain high-performance printed organic solar cells. Here, we demonstrate a novel solvent additive approach employing trace amounts of phthalates as additives to control polymer crystallinity and suppress unfavorable phase separation in a representative PTB7-Th/P(NDI2OD-2T) all-polymer solar cell. The best-performing additive increased the blade-coated device performance from 2.09 to 4.50% power conversion efficiency, an over twofold improvement, mitigating the loss in performance that is typically observed during process transfer from spin-coating to blade-coating. It is suggested that the improved device performance stems from a finer polymer phase-separation size and overall improved active layer morphology, evidenced by device characterization data and indirectly supported by grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering analyses. Real-time X-ray diffraction measurements during blade-coating provide mechanistic insights and suggest that the dioctyl phthalate additive may act as a compatibilizer, reducing the demixing of the donor and acceptor polymer during film formation, enabling a smaller phase separation and improved performance. The structural diversity of the class of phthalate additives makes this simple yet effective concept promising for translating other all-polymer material systems to blade-coating and other scalable printing techniques.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Comparison of juvenile white sturgeon blade strike survival through a conventional and a novel hydropower turbine

Hydropower is a globally important renewable energy source with profound impacts on aquatic organisms, including direct injury and mortality to fish that move through hydropower facilities. While it is expected that the characteristics of turbine design and operation influence the type, frequency, and magnitude of injuries suffered by entrained fish, few direct comparisons exist to illustrate differences in fish survival outcomes for conventional and novel turbine designs. This study evaluated blade strike-associated injury and mortality rates for juvenile white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus) passed through a model-scale turbine equipped with a runner having conventional blade profiles (thin, straight leading edges) and the same turbine equipped with a runner designed for improved fish survival (thick, slanted leading edges). In both trials, head and turbine runner rotational speeds were matched to produce five blade peripheral speeds between 15.0 and 27.6 m/s. High-speed video was captured for all turbine passage events. Fish were assessed for injuries following passage, and mortalities were assessed immediately after passage and after 48 h. Conventional runner passage resulted in 42% to 78% survival after 48 h, with approximately one-third of all tested fish killed by severing. Under the same test conditions, immediate and 48 h survival rates through the novel runner were 100% except at the highest speed condition (95.6% survival at 48 h). These results clearly indicate that turbine design has a profound effect on fish survival, and suggest that thoughtful redesign of hydropower equipment could significantly ameliorate the risks of blade strike mortality.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Edgewise Structural Damping of a 2.8-MW Land-Based Wind Turbine Rotor Blade

Modern wind turbines push the predictive capabilities of state-of-the-art aero-servo-elastic tools. The existing limitations hide across the numerical tool chain and can result in serious issues, such as missing aeroelastic instabilities during the design phase. Structural damping is an input that is usually hard to estimate, but also has a major impact on the turbine behavior. In this paper, we discuss an experiment that aims to accurately quantify the structural damping characterizing the edgewise modes of modern wind turbine blades. The experiment is carried out on a 2.8-MW land-based wind turbine and features a fast yaw actuation that induces an edgewise motion on one of the three blades. The Covariant-subspace system identification (Cov-SSI) method is then used to post-process the blade root moment to estimate the short-term edgewise structural damping. Despite limitations of the Cov-SSI method, which consistently under-predicts the absolute values of damping, we observe that structural damping decreases across the first three blade edgewise modes, which is different from the stiffness-proportional damping model that assumes that structural damping increases with the modes. This paper argues that a stiffness-proportional damping model, which is implemented in most aeroelastic tools, is therefore not conservative and might hide aeroelastic instabilities that can instead appear in the field.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Computational Fluid Dynamics Study of a Cross-Flow Marine Hydrokinetic Turbine and the Combined Influence of Struts and Helical Blades

A computational fluid dynamics study was performed for a cross-flow marine hydrokinetic turbine. The analysis was done in three dimensions and used the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solver in the commercial code STAR-CCM+. The base turbine configuration is the RivGen(R) Turbine, designed by the Ocean Renewable Power Company. A convergence and uncertainty analysis was performed for both the spatial and temporal discretization; this was done using the base configuration, which features support struts and helical foils. Both struts and helical blades introduce three-dimensional flow effects, influencing the complex flow phenomenon of dynamic stall. The study compares the relative impact of struts on power performance and blade loading for both helical and straight blades, and found that for this turbine the relative loss in power from struts was lower with helical blades.

CFD↗
DOE OSTI2020

Low cost carbon fiber as potential lightning strike protection for wind turbine blades

Until recently, glass fiber composites (GFRP) were the preferred choice to prepare wind turbine blades due to their low cost compared to their counterpart carbon fiber composites (CFRP). However, to harvest the maximum wind energy, ever larger wind turbine blades are being manufactured. To support such a large structure carbon fiber composites CFRP have become the integral part of load bearing structures in the blade. In this work, we are proposing to utilize the low cost carbon fiber (LCCF), manufactured at Carbon Fiber Technology Facility (CFTF) of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as not only the cost effective alternative to the currently used carbon fiber (CF) but also as the lightning strike protection of the wind turbine blades. Wind turbines often get hit by lightning strikes due to their operating locations. LCCF can provide structural integrity to these gigantic structures and mitigate the effect of lightning strike on them by effectively dissipating the current. Two composite panels made of LCCF were tested against artificial lightning strikes of 100 kA and 200 kA (component A of lightning waveform SAE ARP 5412-B). The results showed very high resilience of LCCF composite due to their high electrical conductivity both in-plane and in through-thickness directions. There was no significant damage (fiber breakage, resin evaporation or delamination) in both the cases.

Kumar, Vipin↗
DOE OSTI2025

High fidelity blade-resolved and actuator line data from a 16 turbine wind farm simulation using ExaWind

This data was generated with the ExaWind code suite (https://github.com/Exawind) as a demonstration of a large, 16 turbine wind farm simulation, calculated using two different levels of fidelity. The lower level of fidelity approach uses an actuator line approach to represent the turbines, and was simulated with AMR-Wind (https://github.com/Exawind/amr-wind/) as the background flow solver, coupled to OpenFAST (https://github.com/OpenFAST/openfast). The higher level of fidelity simulation uses a blade-resolved approach, and is done using AMR-Wind, Nalu-Wind (https://github.com/Exawind/nalu-wind), OpenFAST, and TIOGA (https://github.com/Exawind/tioga). In the blade-resolved simulation, ExaWind couples together a background flow solver, AMR-Wind, and a near-body solver, Nalu-Wind, through an overset technique from the TIOGA application. OpenFAST handles the structural dynamics of the turbine blades and towers, which informs the fluid-structure interaction of the wind turbines with the flow solvers. In the actuator line simulation, a mesh of 295M elements was used for a 5km x 5km domain, and it was simulated using 256 nodes (2048 GPU's) on the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility Frontier supercomputer. For the blade-resolved simulation, 1.5B element mesh was used in the AMR-Wind background 5km x 5km domain, and 16M elements were used for each turbine in the Nalu-Wind domains, for a total of 1.7B elements. This was simulated using 384 nodes on Frontier, with each node using 56 cores for Nalu-Wind and 8 GPU cores. The data in this archive includes the turbine outputs from OpenFAST, 2D sampling planes from AMR-Wind, and full-field solution files from AMR-Wind and Nalu-Wind.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Automated Quantification of Wind Turbine Blade Leading Edge Erosion from Field Images

Wind turbine blade leading edge erosion is a major source of power production loss and early detection benefits optimization of repair strategies. Two machine learning (ML) models are developed and evaluated for automated quantification of the areal extent, morphology and nature (deep, shallow) of damage from field images. The supervised ML model employs convolutional neural networks (CNN) and learns features (specific types of damage) present in an annotated set of training images. The unsupervised approach aggregates pixel intensity thresholding with calculation of pixel-by-pixel shadow ratio (PTS) to independently identify features within images. The models are developed and tested using a dataset of 140 field images. The images sample across a range of blade orientation, aspect ratio, lighting and resolution. Each model (CNN v PTS) is applied to quantify the percent area of the visible blade that is damaged and classifies the damage into deep or shallow using only the images as input. Both models successfully identify approximately 65% of total damage area in the independent images, and both perform better at quantifying deep damage. The CNN is more successful at identifying shallow damage and exhibits better performance when applied to the images after they are preprocessed to a common blade orientation.

Aird, Jeanie A.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Land-based wind turbines with flexible rail-transportable blades – Part 1: Conceptual design and aeroservoelastic performance

This work investigates the conceptual design and the aeroservoelastic performance of land-based wind turbines whose blades can be transported on rail via controlled bending. The turbines have a nameplate power of 5 MW and a rotor diameter of 206 m, and they aim to represent the next generation of land-based machines. Three upwind designs and two downwind designs are presented, combining different design goals together with conventional glass and pultruded carbon fiber laminates in the spar caps. One of the five blade designs is segmented and serves as a benchmark to the state of the art in industry. The results show that controlled flexing requires a reduction in the flapwise stiffness of the blades, but it represents a promising pathway for increasing the size of land-based wind turbine rotors. Given the required stiffness, the rotor can be designed either downwind with standard rotor preconing and nacelle uptilt angles or upwind with higher-than-usual angles. A downwind-specific controller is also presented, featuring a cut-out wind speed reduced to 19 m s –1 and a pitch-to-stall shutdown strategy to minimize blade tip deflections toward the tower. The flexible upwind and downwind rotor designs equipped with pultruded carbon fiber spar caps are found to generate the lowest levelized cost of energy, 2.9 % and 1.3 %, respectively, less than the segmented design. The paper concludes with several recommendations for future work in the area of large flexible wind turbine rotors.

17 WIND ENERGY↗