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Wind Energy
Wind energy technology
Mission of TUM Wind Energy Institute (WEI): ‘to educate students and to advance
wind energy science and technology towards a fully renewable future energy mix’.
Wind energy has become the number one renewable
source of energy in the world, and it is expected to play an
ever-growing role in the transition away from fossil fuels.
The success of wind energy is primarily due to the great
progress made in the last decades in understanding the
complex physical phenomena that underlie the process of
energy conversion from wind, and translating this know
ledge into sound technical solutions. Notwithstanding
the recent advances, there are still many scientific and
technological challenges that need to be overcome, in
order to increase the penetration of wind, reduce its cost
and mitigate its impacts. To contribute to the achievement
of these goals, the Wind Energy Institute at TUM works
on basic scientific and application-oriented problems,
often in close collaboration with industry. Areas of specific
expertise of the institute embrace all main wind-energy-
relevant scientific disciplines, including aerodynamics,
structures, dynamics, materials, controls, with a strong
focus on a multidisciplinary and a system-engineering
point of view. Some of the most exciting on-going projects
at the institute are briefly described in the following.
Design of Wind Turbines
The design of wind turbines is an extremely
complex multi-disciplinary activity. In the design
process, one must be able to find the best possible
compromises from different and often contrasting
requirements. In addition, multiple aspects of the problem
have profound and complex couplings, including the
aerodynamic and structural designs, the control laws
used to govern the machine, and the performance and
characteristics of all on-board sub-systems. To address
these challenges, we develop automated design proce-
dures implemented in sophisticated software tools, which
are capable of performing the integrated aerostructural
design of a complete wind turbine. Using these tools, WEI
researchers work on answering the following and many
other fascinating questions:
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What are the optimal machine sizes and configurations
for a given application?
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What are the impacts and possible benefits of new
technologies, as for example passive and active load
alleviation methods? And what are their costs and
drawbacks?
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Are new wind turbine configurations competitive with
standard designs, and if so, for which applications?
Is there any advantage in downwind, free-yawing
machines, pre-aligned rotors, active flaps or in the use
of unconventional techniques such as active coning
and morphing rotors?
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Will future extremely large blades look similar to the
current ones, or are there better and possibly radically
different ways of designing blades?
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How can we hedge against the myriad uncertainties
that plague the design and operation of wind turbines
and farms? How can we achieve more robust designs
and reduce safety factors?
Blade of a 3.4MW wind turbine designed by WEI researchers for the
international collaborative project IEA Wind Task 37 on wind systems
engineering.
Projects
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International collaborative project IEA Wind Task 37
‘Systems Engineering’
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Industrial Ph.D. project ‘Design of Very Large Light-
Weight Rotors’
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Industrial project ‘Uncertainty Quantification for Large
Offshore Wind Turbines’
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TUM-Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
Ph.D. project ‘Bio-Inspired Wind Turbines for Mon-
soonal Climates’