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MEAM Seminar: “Leveraging Unsteady Flows for Enhanced Performance in Wind-Energy Systems”

February 21, 2023 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Wind energy is poised to play a considerable role in the global transition to clean-energy technologies within the next few decades. Modern wind turbines, like aircraft and other aerodynamic structures, are typically designed with the assumption that the flows they encounter will be uniform and steady. However, atmospheric flows are highly unsteady, and systems operating within them must contend with gust disturbances that can lead to performance losses and structural damage. Therefore, the next generation of wind-energy systems requires physics-informed design principles that effectively account for and even leverage these unsteady flow phenomena for enhanced power generation, robustness, and operational longevity. Accordingly, this talk presents experimental and analytical efforts to characterize unsteady aerodynamics in wind-turbine contexts. First, we study the effects of unsteady streamwise motion on turbine performance, as recent work has suggested that these dynamics may enable time-averaged efficiencies that exceed the steady-flow Betz limit on turbine efficiency. The power production of and flow around a periodically surging wind turbine are thus investigated using experiments and analytical modeling, which suggest that floating offshore wind turbines could leverage unsteady surge motions for power-production gains of up to 6% over the stationary case. Additionally, field measurements in the wakes of full-scale vertical-axis wind turbines using artificial snow as tracer particles yield insights into the contributions of unsteady vortex dynamics to the performance of turbines in wind-farm arrays. These investigations provide the analytical and experimental foundations for future studies of unsteady atmospheric flows, which will lead to the development of principles and techniques for wind-farm siting, control, and optimization.

Nathaniel J. Wei

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Aerospace, California Institute of Technology

Nathan Wei is a Ph.D. candidate in Aeronautics at Caltech, advised by Prof. John O. Dabiri. His research combines theoretical, experimental, and numerical approaches to characterize the effects of unsteady flows on natural and engineering systems, such as wind turbines, aircraft, and flying and swimming animals. Nathan graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2017 with a B.S.E. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, spent a year at the TU Darmstadt on a Fulbright research fellowship, and earned an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2020 before moving with his advisor to Caltech. He is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including a Stanford Graduate Fellowship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Details

Date:
February 21, 2023
Time:
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Event Category:
Event Tags:

Organizer

Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Phone
215-746-1818
Email
meam@seas.upenn.edu
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Venue

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104 United States
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