Tuhin Das, a professor in University of Central Florida’s (UCF) Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is leading a $3.3 million project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to research floating offshore wind turbines.
His goal is to model floating offshore wind turbines and use the model to explore design improvements while concurrently investigating new ideas for control and sensing, a concept that is termed Control Co-Design. He is working to build a software that simulates effects of external phenomena, such as waves crashing and changing winds, on the floating platform and the turbine system. Das’ software platform will become a product that can be hosted on a university web page and be licensed or commercialized, he says.
