Windmills

During their 20-year lifetime, wind turbines must reliably operate under a wide variety of environmental conditions. In order to test their capabilities and assess the risks of failure, numerical modeling is essential for manufacturers. Physical tests are expensive and only possible in limited circumstances due to the size of wind turbines and the lack of control of the wind conditions. ESI offers virtual prototyping software and services helping wind energy companies address these challenges and understand the intricacies of design and the interactions of the sub-systems during the different environmental conditions as well as the physics of the materials to manufacture components in a cost efficient way. 

Mechanical Components reliability

ESI’s solutions enable the dynamic simulations of the mechanical system (gearbox, transmission) accounting for the flexibility of the supporting structure. This enables to predict the lifetime and the risk of failure for what represents the first cause of loss of windmills.

Noise of windmills

Radiated noise is a major concern when planning wind turbines, including noise produced by the blades and the noise radiated from the nacelle. ESI solution includes a wide range of modeling options, such as CFD with moving components, SEA (Statistical Energy Analysis), FE (Finite Element), BEM (Boundary Element Method) and hybrid FE/SEA (Finite Element/Statistical Energy Analysis), to determine near and far field radiation from panels and openings.

Natural wind conditions

Power fluctuation is one of main is one of the main issues in connecting wind farms to the power network. While an increasing number of utilities are requesting from the manufacturers to provide clues about the level of fluctuations, these can usually only be provided after testing full-scale prototypes in real wind conditions. ESI has developed a numerical natural wind model that matches the statistics of wind profiles and wind gusts that can be applied to realistic models of the windmills to predict the power fluctuations before the first prototype is manufactured.

Lightning strikes and electromagnetic impact

ESI's PAM-CEM Simulation Suite helps justifying the design of lightning protection systems and evaluating the influence of wind farms on weather forecast and airport approach radars.

Manufacturing of very large blades

With the continuously growing dimensions of windmills, the manufacturing of very large blades has become a serious challenge for the industry. The traditional physical trial-and-error process is becoming financially inefficient. ESI’s Virtual Manufacturing solution offers an effective alternate approach to the optimization of the manufacturing of very large blades with Resin Transfer Molding providing the means to define optimum injection strategy.