Research conducted at the Scaled Wind Farm Technology Facility (SWiFT) in Lubbock, Texas, drew a lot of interest from attendees at the International Modal Analysis Conference held in Orlando, Florida, last February. According to a presentation given by DOE's Sandia National Laboratories, a large quantity of unique data was collected during the facility's construction and characterization tests.

The data collected during the characterization tests included mass, center of gravity, moment of inertia, natural frequencies, and mode shapes of each main turbine component tested individually and throughout turbine assembly. The unique nature of characterizing individual components prior to assembly as well as fully assembled systems opens numerous doors for research in the dynamics of coupled systems. The component characterization will also provide insight into the importance of each component to the overall system dynamics and will allow for an updated, realistic aero-elastic model to be used during performance prediction to support the design of future rotors for use at the SWiFT facility. The updated models will be made publicly available for researchers to perform validation studies of various modal analysis and vibration techniques as well as investigate turbine-to-turbine interactions and advanced rotor concepts.

For more information visit Sandia's Scaled Wind Farm Technology web page.