Small Wind

Improved Small Wind Turbine Performance and Instrumentation for Turbulence

Mehmet Bayram Yildirim, Ph. D.
bayram.yildirim@wichita.edu

Ruth Douglas Miller, PhD
Kansas State University
rdmiller@ksu.edu

Haitao Liao, PhD
University of Tennessee –Knoxville
hliao4@utk.edu

The long term goal of this research is to improve small wind turbine performance through local turbulence modeling and condition health monitoring tools. This will include the development of better instrumentation for turbulence measurements. The one year goals of this research will be to

a) collect and analyze wind, atmospheric and turbine performance data;
b) develop computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models that capture the interactions between atmospheric flow and low altitude structures using data from a);
c) develop diagnostics/prognostics algorithms for selected wind turbine components and validate the algorithms using data from a); and
d) perform proof‚Äêof‚Äêconcept measurements with ultrasonic transducers of the bulk wind velocity.