The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently released an expanded version of its FAST wind turbine computer-aided engineering tool under a new modularisation framework.
The new framework will transform FAST into a flexible modelling software for wind and water power technology developers. The new release includes:
- An upgraded version of the AeroDyn aerodynamics module that includes tower drag loading
- The capability to analyse multimember offshore wind turbine substructures
- A new state-space hydrodynamic theory option in the HydroDyn hydrodynamics module
- A new Mooring Analysis Program (MAP) for modeling multisegmented mooring quasi-static behaviors of floating offshore wind turbines
- Full conversion of FAST into the new modularisation framework.
