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Numerical Manufacturing And Design (NuMAD) Tool for Wind Turbine Blades

The structural design and optimization of wind turbine blades is a complex task. In many cases it is difficult to find the optimal design of a turbine blade by hand, or by trial and error, and the software tools used for such designs are most effective when integrated into automated optimization and analysis algorithms. A new version of the software tool NuMAD (Numerical Manufacturing And Design) for the design and modeling of wind turbine blades is developed and described.

Newly released NuMAD v3.0 is structured to be run from a scripting environment and easily called by optimization processes. The previous release, NuMAD v2.0, relied on the use of a graphical user interface. Modifications were made to the MATLAB-based source code to decouple the internal functions from the graphical user interface, and additional functionality was added for convenience in performing high-fidelity finite element analysis. NuMAD 3.0 has been successfully implemented for optimization of large, flexible rotor blades, and is suitable to be made available for public use.

NuMAD Developers

NuMAD has been developed by Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Technologies Office.

Current members of the development team include:

  • Joshua Paquette (“Josh”) (Sandia - PI)

  • Brandon Lee Ennis (Sandia)

  • Christopher Lee Kelley (Sandia)

  • Evan Anderson (Sandia)

  • Ernesto Camarena (Sandia)

  • Kelley Ruehl (Sandia)

  • Ryan James Clarke (Sandia)

Former members of the development team include:

  • Jonathan Charles Berg

  • Brian Resor

  • Daniel Laird

Funding

Development and maintenance of the NuMAD code is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.