Dynamic inflow and unsteady aerodynamics models for modal and stability analyses in OpenFAST

Abstract This work presents two aerodynamic models that are used to perform modal and stability analyses of wind turbines. Including aerodynamic effects in stability analyses is important to capture aerodynamic inertia, stiffness, and damping. The two models consist of a dynamic inflow model based on Øye’s model and an unsteady aerodynamics model based on a simplified Beddoes-Leishman dynamic stall model. Both models are written in a continuous-time state-space form, which is the form needed to perform linearizations within OpenFAST. In this article, we present the new models, perform some simple verifications against HAWC2 results, and then perform stability analyses. We investigate the contribution of the aerodynamic effects on the turbine modes, particularly the flapwise modes, which are the most affected. Because of the development presented in this work, Campbell diagrams accounting for dynamic stall and dynamic wake effects were generated for the first time using OpenFAST.