Load Calculations

LAC engineering provides load calculations and analysis of wind turbine performance and
loading by considering all relevant aspects and conditions surrounding the wind turbine on site.

This includes:
 

• Setup of state of-the-art design load basis coordinated with customer requirements and certifying authorities
• Complete turbine modelling, i.e. wind field, aerodynamics, structural dynamics and control schemes
• Full dynamic timedomain simulation and documentation of design loads

Design load basis
A design load basis is a map including each Design Load Case (DLC) the turbine may expect to see, including external and internal conditions. External conditions cover the environmental conditions, especially the wind, and internal conditions cover the performance and operation conditions of the turbine, as e.g. the pitch system working normal or abnormal/failing.

Turbine modeling
A complete dynamic turbine model includes aerodynamic, structural and control sub-models. Based on the load basis, LAC estimates the expected loads, fatigue and extreme-wise. For this purpose LAC engineering uses the in-house developed aero-elastic time-domain simulation program LACflex - for more information see Technology on our website.

Simulation and documentation of design loads
If load simulations reveal an undesirable control action or strategy, LAC engineering can offer the designer constructive feed-back in order to re-tune the system behavior to obtain lower loads and thus a more cost effective design. LAC engineering concludes this work by writing a Load Document which can be used for strength calculations of main- and subcomponents of the turbine.