Hi, everyone
I’m performing 10-min simulation with NREL 5MW turbine based on 5MW_Land_DLL_WTurb.fst with NTM condition in the wind speed range of 3m/s-25m/s. When the simulation is performed in large wind speed (e.g. 25m/s), I got the following warnings:
FAST_Solution:CalcOutputs_And_SolveForInputs:SolveOption2:AD_CalcOutput:RotCalcOutput:BEMT_CalcOut
put(node 5, blade 1):UA_CalcOutput:UA_BlendSteady:Temporarily turning off UA due to high angle of
attack or low relative velocity. This warning will not be repeated though the condition may
persist.
FAST_Solution:FAST_AdvanceStates:ED_ABM4:ED_CalcContStateDeriv:SetCoordSy:Small angle assumption
violated in SUBROUTINE SmllRotTrans() due to a large blade deflection (ElastoDyn SetCoordSy). The
solution may be inaccurate. Simulation continuing, but future warnings from SmllRotTrans() will
be suppressed.
Additional debugging message from SUBROUTINE SmllRotTrans(): 3.7688 s
FAST_Solution:CalcOutputs_And_SolveForInputs:SolveOption2:AD_CalcOutput:RotCalcOutput:BEMT_CalcOut
put(node 18, blade 2):UA_CalcOutput:Mach number exceeds 0.3. Theory is invalid. This warning will
not be repeated though the condition may persist.
The last two warning is mainly due to the start-up transient and does not repeat in the following time steps. However, for the first warning, the angle of attack at node 5, blade 1 is always high as in the following figure.
My question is:
(1) Are the 2nd and 3rd warning is indeed due to startup transient as I guessed?
(2) Is such high angle of attack normal? Does it match the realistic situation that in high wind speeds the A.o.A is such high?
Thanks in advance!
Dear Jason,
Thank you for your kindly reply!
Regarding your 2nd comment, the current initial condition I’m using is as follows. I only changed RotSpeed to a roughly selected value as 8 rpm, so that tower strike at startup transients could be avoided in some degrees.
I’m trying to modify the initial condition as suggested, but I don’t think I fully understand your 2nd comment, so I will state what I’m doing in the following text to see if that is right:
The OopDef1, IPDefl, BlPitch(1)-(3) and RotSpeed should be modified to a value determined by the following prodecure:
(1) The mean hub-height wind speed is specified as 8.5 m/s according to an IEC wind turbine class of IIB, which is the situation I’m focusing on.
(2) Given this mean hub-height wind speed, some 10-min simulations could be performed and the mean value of OopDef1, IPDefl, BlPitch(1)-(3) and RotSpeed could be used for the initial condition.
I hope my understanding is correct 
Best regards,
Dear @Tongzhou.Zhang,
Yes, that is correct. In general, we recommend to set the initial rotor speed and initial blade-pitch angles to their expected (mean) values conditioned on the mean hub-height wind speed. Setting initial blade-tip or tower-top displacments could further reduce the initial transients. At 8.5 m/s for the NREL 5-MW baseline wind turbine, I would expect these to be around 9.6 rpm and 0 degree for RotSpeed and BlPitch.
Best regards,
Dear Jason,
Thank you for your reply.
I have modified the initial conditions as follows:
However, when I am performing multiple simulations at 25m/s wind speed with randomly selected random seeds in TurbSim, about 20% of the simulation are aborted due to the two following reasons:
-
FAST_Solution:FAST_AdvanceStates:AD_UpdateStates:SetDisturbedInflow:TwrInfl:Tower strike.
-
FAST_Solution:CalcOutputs_And_SolveForInputs:SolveOption2:AD_CalcOutput:RotCalcOutput:BEMT_CalcOutput(node 18, blade 2): UA_CalcOutput:Mach number exceeds 1.0. Equations cannot be evaluated.
For the first case, the tower clearance reaches around 3m as shown in the following figure, which triggers the tower strike I guess. I also notice the abnormal behavior of blade pitch as shown below.
For the second case, the mach number becomes unstable and triggers the error.
I have no idea how I can further modify the model to avoid such situation.
Another situation is that, even though OpenFAST terminated normally, the load might be too little. For example, when I ran this model at 19m/s wind speed, the blade root flapwise bending moment may look like this:
The maximum of blade root flapwise bending is only 3000 kNm, which is much lower compared with existing studies. Is it because the turbine is not in the normal working condition?
Dear @Tongzhou.Zhang,
Again, the initial conditions should depend on the mean hub-height wind speed being simulated. I suspect your controller is not responding properly because of poor initial conditions. At 25 m/s for the NREL 5-MW baseline wind turbine, I would expect these to be around 12.1 rpm and 23.5 degree for RotSpeed and BlPitch.
Best regards,
Dear Jason,
I understand. I misunderstood the “mean hub-height wind speed” as the expected value of long-term wind speed where the turbine is working. The initial conditions are dependent on the 10-min average wind speed, which in my case should be the “URef” in TurbSim .inp file. I will try it later.
Thank you very much!
Best Regards,
Dear Jason, I’m studying the IEA Wind 15-Megawatt VolturnUS-S and I want to simulate different wind velocities. I changed the initial blade pitch and the Initial rotor speed in Elastodyn but i got the following warnings
1)Temporarily turning off UA due to high angle of attack or low relative velocity. This warning will not be repeated though the condition may persist
2)Mach number exceeds 0.3.
My airfoil aerodynamics model is the Beddoes-Leishman.
Do I have to change something else ?
Best regards
Georgia
Dear @Georgia.Tsoukleri ,
Regarding the Mach number warning for the IEA Wind 15-MW reference wind turbine, a similar question was asked and answered in the following forum topic: Mach Number exceeds 0.3 for large wind turbines (15MW) .
Regarding the warning about “temporarily turning off UA”, this warning has been discussed in other several other forum topics and often happens at inboard stations
Best regards,
1 Like
Dear Jason,
I have encountered a similar problem recently, too.
I have been simulating IEA 15MW recently:
These are the conditions I set：
In order to adjust my jacket foundation, I change the height of my tower but kept its length unchanged.
Turbulent wind is generated by turbsim:
In fact it only fails when Turbsim|InflowFile|HFlowAng = 300, and can run normally in all other directions. I tried some methods to make it restrain itself(set a smaller time step size, set NumCrctn = 1), but all failed, could you tell me how should I do?
looking forward your reply!
Dear @Daozhi.Tang,
Well, it looks like your modeling an idling turbine that goes unstable. At certain yaw errors in the idling condition, a known blade-edgewise instability exists, e.g., as discussed in the following forum topic: Designing for yaw errors using FAST. In the absence of more information, I would guess this is the issue you are running into.
FYI: You can set the fixed wind direction in either TurbSim (HFlowAng) or the InflowWind module of OpenFAST (PropagationDir), but the latter is preferred because the wind will propagate along the wind direction specified in InflowWind (PropagationDir) regardless of the setting of HFlowAng in TurbSim.
Best regards,
Thanks for your reply, The link you provided is very useful. If you could answer me another question I would appreciate it.
The first picture is the relationship between the bottom bending moment of the tower and the wind direction yaw that I drew. The wind300wave-90 will crash under the shutdown condition as described in your link.
Moreover, I think the tower bottom bending moment near the lateral direction of the wind300wave-90 shutdown condition is also inaccurate. Obvious data instability can be observed in both their tower bottom lateral displacement and bending moment.
I think, theoretically, the working condition with the maximum bending moment at the bottom of the tower should be at 90deg, as shown in the following figure. Do you agree?Or rather, which shutdown condition do you think corresponds to the maximum bending moment at the bottom of the tower?
