Design of a two-bladed 10 MW rotor with teetering hub

Abstract

Two-bladed rotors are emerging as a viable alternative to classic three-bladed ones for driving down the cost of energy of large sized wind turbines. By eliminating a blade one could easily reduce the cost of the rotor. However, design challenges arise due to the reduced power output and the resonance typically occurring between the frequency of the tower and the two-per-revolution. In this work, we perform a dedicated design of a two-bladed configuration for a 10 MW wind turbine: the solution is upwind and equipped with a teeter hinge at the hub in order to alleviate the loads on the fixed infrastructure. The rotor and the tower are then optimized by using a holistic design algorithm, and a complete technical and economic assessment of the optimal design is conducted against a reference three-bladed one in order to compare the main performance including loads, energy yielding and the cost of energy.