Design loads for wind turbines using the environmental contour method

When interest is in establishing ultimate design loads for wind turbines such that a service life of say, 20 years is assured, alternative procedures are available. One class of methods works by employing statistical loads extrapolation techniques following development first of 10-minute load maxima distributions (conditional on inflow parameters such as mean wind speed and turbulence intensity). The parametric conditional load distributions require extensive turbine response simulations over the entire inflow parameter range. We will refer to this first class of methods as the parametric method. An alternative method is based on traditional structural reliability concepts and isolates only a subset of interesting inflow parameter combinations that are easily first found by working backward from the target return period of interest. This so-called inverse reliability method can take on various forms depending on the number of variables that are modeled as random. An especially attractive form that separates inflow (environmental) variables from turbine load/response variables and further neglects variability in the load variables given inflow is referred to as the environmental contour (EC) method. We shall show that the EC method requires considerably smaller amounts of computation than the parametric method. We compare accuracy and efficiency of the two methods in 1- and 20-year design out-of-plane blade bending loads at the root of two 1.5 MW turbines. Simulation models for these two turbines with contrasting features, in that one is stall-regulated and the other pitch-regulated, are used here. Refinements to the EC method that account for the effects of the neglected response variability are proposed to improve the turbine design load estimates.