Robust aerodynamic design optimization of variable speed wind turbine rotors

Background: Manufacturing and assembly tolerances may cause wind turbine (WT) energy production to differ significantly from nominal design targets. Issue can be alleviated in two ways: A. Reducing tolerances. This may be expensive. B. Developing reliable and computationally affordable robust analysis and design optimization technologies. Robust WT rotor is one yielding minimal variations of aerodynamic performance arising due to errors affecting rotor geometry. Objectives: To develop/demonstrate computational framework for the robust design optimization of WT rotors. Main aim is to 1) maximize expectation and 2) minimize standard deviation of yearly energy production. Highlight computational effectiveness of the Univariate Reduced Quadrature approach to ‘deterministic’ uncertainty propagation. Highlight capabilities of a recently developed multi-level evolution-based optimizer