Preliminary Modelling Study of Ice Accretion on Wind Turbines

One of the main challenges associated with cold-climate wind energy is icing on wind turbines and a series of icing-induced problems such as production loss, blade fatigue and safety issues. Because of the difficulties with on-site measurements, simulations are often used to understand and predict icing events. In this paper, a new methodology for prediction of icing-induced production loss is proposed, from which the fundamentals of ice accretion on wind turbines can be better understood and the operational production losses can be more reliably predicted. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling of ice accretion on wind turbines is also performed for different ice events, resulting in a reliable framework for CFD-based ice accretion modelling which is one of the key elements in the new methodology.