Related papers: Material optimization of flexible blades for wind …
Renewable energy has received strong attention and investment to replace fossil energy sources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Quite good and good wind speed areas have been invested in building large-capacity wind farms for many…
Odd materials feature antisymmetric response to perturbations. This anomalous property can stem from the nonequilibrium activity of their components, which is sustained by an external energy supply. These materials open the door to…
While confinement is understood to increase the power and thrust coefficients of cross-flow turbines, how the optimal rotor geometry changes with the blockage ratio -- defined as the ratio between the array projected area and the channel…
Self-starting remains a key limitation of lift-driven vertical-axis wind turbines and is strongly influenced by geometric design choices that also govern steady-state performance. This work quantifies the roles of chord length and blade…
In this paper we report a new promising idea on the design and manufacturing of ply composite structures, tailored to exhibit maximum stiffness under given weight constraints and loading conditions. It is based on the idea behind an…
We propose a reinforcement learning strategy to control wind turbine energy generation by actively changing the rotor speed, the rotor yaw angle and the blade pitch angle. A double deep Q-learning with a prioritized experience replay agent…
Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs) made of soft constituents have emerged as promising material-structure systems in potential applications across many engineering disciplines, such as soft robots, actuators, energy harvesting, and tissue…
Soft-growing robots are innovative devices that feature plant-inspired growth to navigate environments. Thanks to their embodied intelligence of adapting to their surroundings and the latest innovation in actuation and manufacturing, it is…
We present an experimental and numerical study that describes the motion of flexible blades, scaled to be dynamically similar to natural aquatic vegetation, forced by wave-induced oscillatory flows. For the conditions tested, blade motion…
Steady-state response of an isolated horizontal axis wind turbine blade undergoing out-of-plane and in-plane vibrations are studied considering the two cases separately. Equations of motion for both cases are sought by modeling the blade as…
A central challenge in the design of energy-efficient wind farms is the presence of wake effects between turbines. When a wind turbine harvests energy from free wind, it produces a turbulent region with reduced energy for downstream…
There is a growing mechanics literature concerning the macroscopic properties of mechanism-based mechanical metamaterials. This amounts mathematically to a homogenization problem involving nonlinear elasticity. A key goal is to identify the…
The actuator line model (ALM) is a commonly used method to represent lifting surfaces such as wind turbine blades within Large-Eddy Simulations (LES). In the ALM the lift and drag forces are replaced by an imposed body force which is…
Cutting mechanics in soft solids have been a subject of study for several decades, an interest fuelled by the multitude of its applications, including material testing, manufacturing, and biomedical technology. Wire cutting is the simplest…
Blades manufactured through flank and point milling will likely exhibit geometric variability. Gauging the aerodynamic repercussions of such variability, prior to manufacturing a component, is challenging enough, let alone trying to predict…
In this letter a mathematical model to design nano-bio-inspired hierarchical materials is proposed. An optimization procedure is also presented. Simple formulas describing the dependence of strength, fracture toughness and stiffness on the…
Wind turbines operating within wind farms experience complex aerodynamic loading arising from the interplay between wake-induced velocity deficits, enhanced turbulence, and varying operational conditions. Understanding the relationship…
Motivated by the increasing concerns over environmental challenges such as global warming and the exhaustion of fossil-fuel reserves, the renewable energy industry has become the most demanded electrical energy production source worldwide.…
Man-made slender structures are known to be sensitive to high levels of vibration, due to their flexibility, which often cause irreversible damage. In nature, trees repeatedly endure large amplitudes of motion, mostly caused by strong…
Plasticity is inherent to many engineering materials such as metals. While it can degrade the load-carrying capacity of structures via material yielding, it can also protect structures through plastic energy dissipation. To fully harness…