Harmonic balance Navier-Stokes aerodynamic analysis of horizontal axis wind turbines in yawed wind

Multi–megawatt horizontal axis wind turbines often operate in yawed wind transients in which the resulting periodic loads acting on blades, drive–train, tower and foundation adversely impact on fatigue life. Accurately predicting yawed wind turbine aerodynamics and resulting structural loads can be challenging, and would require the use of computationally expensive high–fidelity unsteady Navier–Stokes Computational Fluid Dynamics. The high computational cost of this approach can be significantly reduced by using a frequency–domain framework. The paper summarizes the main features of the COSA Harmonic Balance Navier–Stokes solver for the analysis of open rotor periodic flows, presents initial validation results based on the analysis of the NREL Phase VI experiment, and it also provides a sample application to the analysis of a multi–megawatt turbine in yawed wind. The reported analyses indicate that the harmonic balance solver determines the considered periodic flows from 30 to 50 times faster than the conventional time–domain approach with negligible accuracy penalty to the latter. Copyright c2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.