AeroDyn-BeamDyn coupling for large diameters

Hi,

We are using NREL’s FAST for designing an offshore wind farm with turbines having a diameter of 140 m. Whenever we define a blade geometry with a length that is larger than 61.5 m, we are getting the “node does not project onto line2 element” error within the FAST_InitiializeAll: InitModuleMappings (see attached screenshot).

This is the same error that shows up when the last node of the NREL 5MW rotor is at 61.5 m in the AeroDyn blade file of the CertTest-files, where it is saying: “!bjj: because of precision in the BD-AD coupling, 61.5m didn’t work, so I changed it to 61.4999m”.

Is it not possible to simulate turbines with a larger radius than 65 m or is there anything we can do in order to avoid this error?

Thank you very much for your help.

Best regards

Florian

Dear Florian,

There should be no problem in general running FAST for larger rotors. I’d have to see your BeamDyn and AeroDyn discretizations to comment as to what might be causing the mesh-mapping problem in your case.

Best regards,