An integrated CAD methodology applied to wind turbine optimization

Abstract

Modern engineering practice for designing physical products requires the creation of a CAD model of the design for documentation and manufacturing. As the design evolves from concept through to production, it is analyzed a number of times, in some cases using general parameters and in others requiring fine details of the product's form. The setup of each analysis is typically disjoint from the previous steps, inhibiting design changes and optimization. This thesis addresses these bottlenecks by proposing a methodology to use the CAD model of the system as the central element. The model is created at the earliest possible stage of the process following a strict synthesis procedure; it then forms a common base for all of the follow-on analyses and development. Computational tools are developed to aid in using the geometric and parametric information in the CAD model to setup simulations, as well as to dynamically drive the CAD model itself for design studies and optimization. The methods and tools are then applied to the design of a wind turbine for power production. Using a common CAD model, various analysis codes and optimization algorithms are applied to the design of the system, to lower the cost of delivered energy. Multidisciplinary aspects of wind turbine design including aerodynamics, structures, and economics are presented together with the employed modeling techniques. The demonstrated improvements achieved over the baseline design lend credence to the methodology, and demonstrate its effectiveness in enhancing the systems performance. The insights gleaned from the present work intimate promising directions for continued development both at the level of software tools and also effective methods for approaching multi-disciplinary design.