FE-DESIGN

Weight reduction and decrease of deve­lop­ment time of wind turbines

Customer request

For wind power plants the weight of each component plays an increasingly important role. Due to rising performance demands the plants get always larger and therefore have higher requirements for stiffness and strength to meet. The combination of numerous load cases complicates the layout enormously. The aim is to find a design that meets all requirements for stiffness, durability and frequency behavior and yet is as light as possible. To accomplish this within the given development period, modern layout methods must be used to supplement the existing experience.

Our solution: Topology optimization with TOSCA Structure.topology

Based on the existing design area a topology optimization was applied. Unneeded material was removed by the software automatically from the design space.

Benefit for the customer

The resulting design proposal met all mechanical requirements. Since for this method only design space and loads must be known, the optimization could be implemented early in the concept phase of the product development cycle. The design proposal could thus be used as an excellent basis for the initial CAD design.

Meshed design space for mainframe of SUZLON wind turbine

Result of topology optimization with TOSCA Structure

Smoothed result computed with TOSCA.smooth

Re-design of the mainframe based on topology optimization result

Assembly of a wind turbine with optimized mainframe

SUZLON wind farm in Hallett, Australia

09.08.10