Airline pilots in training don't just practice operating real airplanes. Much of their training is spent in simulators, where they can experience crashes and other dire situations without loss of life or property.
James Brasseur, an engineering professor at Penn State, compares this approach to how he foresees wind turbines being designed in the future.
Brasseur is the principal investigator on a project aimed at designing a so-called “Cyber Wind Facility,” which is essentially a simulated wind turbine. The idea is to come up with a simulator that will replicate how a real wind turbine would function.
While turbine designers currently test the wind-power generators by building prototypes and seeing how well they work, the Cyber Wind Facility would just require plugging data points into a computer and observing how a virtual turbine performs.
“One of the biggest advantages of this is that you can control the way the atmosphere works,” Brasseur says. The simulator could also collect millions of data points, compared with mere perhaps a dozen from a real turbine.
Earlier this month the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it would give Penn State $1.2 million for its scientists' work on the project. The research matters because today's wind turbines aren't lasting nearly as long as expected. Cracks are forming in the turbines and gear boxes are failing, and engineers don't know exactly why.
“They're designed to last 20 years, but they're developing serious defects after, say, 10 years,” Brasseur says. He hopes a prototype for the Cyber Wind Facility will be ready early next year.
Source: James Brasseur, Penn State University
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen