New Developments for the NWTC's FAST Aeroelastic HAWT Simulator

Abstract

Discrepancies in response predictions among FAST, ADAMS, and other industry-accepted wind turbine analysis codes led the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to dedicate significant time and effort to overhauling its FAST aeroelastic horizontal-axis wind turbine simulator. Included in the overhaul were improvements to the system dynamics models and upgrades in functionality. Improvements were made to the drive train dynamics models, output processing algorithms, tower and blade deflection characterizations, and other models. New features include an enhanced input/output environment, aeroacoustic noise prediction algorithms, periodic linearization routines for controls design, as well as a preprocessing utility that enables FAST to generate ADAMS datasets of wind turbine models. In order to verify that the new features and improved models included in the upgraded FAST were correct, verification tests were run against ADAMS. Comparisons of response predictions between the codes, in general, show excellent agreement. Regions where the different response predictions do not exactly coalesce are attributable to differences in the modeling techniques. This work has culminated in an upgraded version of FAST, equipped with more functionality, that predicts more accurate wind turbine responses than previous versions.