NSF Award
2329911
Wind turbines extract kinetic energy from the wind and convert it into electricity. The kinetic energy content of the wind is sufficient to supply all of the world’s electricity needs. Within less than a year of manufacture wind turbines have generated more electricity than is used in their manufacture and deployment. For these reasons wind energy is making an increasingly important contribution to the green energy revolution. Wind turbine blades are carefully designed for aerodynamic performance to maximize the amount of electricity generated. However, wind turbines also experience very harsh conditions during their 25-to-30-year operating lifetimes that can lead to blade damage. This material loss and roughening of the blades is called leading edge erosion (LEE). It decreases aerodynamic performance and may require repair or replacement which both decreases reliability and increases the cost of energy. The goal of this Global Centers Track 2 Design award is to reduce the cost of energy for wind-generated electricity and enhance the reliability of wind turbines. Addressing this topic requires a coherent multi-disciplinary approach as applied here. This NSF-Global Centers initiative draws partners from academia and practitioners in the US (Cornell University), the UK (University of Lancaster), Canada (Wind Energy Institute of Canada), Norway (University of Bergen), Denmark (Technical University of Denmark and Orsted) and Spain (National Renewable Energy Center of Spain). Together the international team will develop a strategy to reduce key sources of uncertainty in LEE projections from different locations in which wind turbines are, or will be, deployed and to enhance blade durability. Reducing LEE is a priority for global wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm owner operators and would improve energy generation. <br/> <br/>Technical goals of the project are: (i) Improve forecasting of LEE and optimize abatement strategies for pre-construction model simulations. (ii) Advance new detection methods to optimize repair scheduling. (iii) Reduce LEE through materials science advances to reduce damage. (iv) Reduce damage by improved forecasting/observational detection of highly damaging events to enable dynamic operation of wind farms to reduce LEE. The project vision is built around a systems approach and will be addressed within 4-interlinked themes: Theme 1. Atmospheric drivers, Theme 2. Damage detection and quantification, Theme 3. Materials response and redesign, and Theme 4. Aerodynamic implications of LEE. In this planning phase project, the researchers will perform a series of Phenomena Identification and Ranking Tables (PIRT) analyses, and advance fundamental science and engineering knowledge necessary to address LEE. The result will be an end-to-end process-level assessment, research prioritization plus a robust model verification and validation (V&V) framework for constructing a multi-scale inter-disciplinary model chain to generate a priori estimates of LEE potential at geographically dispersed sites. This tool will inform assessments of leading-edge protection requirements and/or other mitigation actions. <br/>This award is funded by the Global Centers program, an innovative program that supports use-inspired research addressing global challenges related to climate change and/or clean energy. Track 2 design awards support U.S.-based researchers to bring together international teams to develop research questions and partnerships, conduct landscape analyses, synthesize data, and/or build multi-stakeholder networks to advance their use-inspired research at larger scale in the future.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
