Publications
Definition of the National Rotor Testbed: An Aeroelastically relevant research-scale wind turbine rotor
Sandia is designing a set of modern, research-quality blades for use on the V27 turbines at the DOE/SNL SWiFT site at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The new blades will replace OEM blades and will be a publicly available resource for subscale rotor research. Features of the new blades do not represent the optimal design for a V27 rotor, but are determined by aeroelastic scaling of relevant parameters and design drivers from a representative megawatt-scale rotor. Scaling parameters and design drivers are chosen based two factors: 1) retrofit to the existing SWiFT turbines and 2) replicate rotor loads and wake formation of a utility scale turbine to support turbine -turbine interaction research at multiple scales. The blades are expected to provide a publicly available baseline blade design which will enable increased participation in future blade research as well as accelerated hardware manufacture and test for demonstration of innovation. This paper discusses aeroelastic scaling approaches, a rotor design process and a summary of design concepts.