FAST-AD code verification - A comparison to ADAMS

Abstract

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) has refocused its wind turbine design-code comparison effort to verify FAST{_}AD with ADAMS. FAST{_}AD is a wind turbine structural-response code developed by Oregon State University for the NWTC. ADAMS is a commercial, general-purpose, multibody-dynamics code developed by Mechanical Dynamics, Inc. ADAMS, which is used in many industries, has been rigorously tested. Both ADAMS and FAST{_}AD use the AeroDyn subroutine package for calculating aerodynamic forces. The University of Utah developed AeroDyn for the NWTC. To compare FAST{_}AD to ADAMS, we modeled a rough approximation of the AWT-27 P4 turbine, using the same properties for both simulators. The AWT-27 is a 275-kilowatt (kW), two-bladed wind turbine. We also created three-bladed versions of the turbine models to verify FAST{_}AD for three-bladed turbines. In this paper, we list the aerodynamic features used in the comparison. We also explain how the programs model the turbine structure, describe the degrees of freedom (DOFs) used for this study, and present simulation comparisons that show very good agreement.