FOCUS 6

FOCUS 6 is the integrated modular tool to design wind turbines and wind turbine components like rotor blades. For more than a decade, FOCUS is being used by the international wind turbine industry.

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FOCUS 6: The integrated Modular Wind Turbine Design Tool

There are numerous separate software tools available to design wind turbines. The integrated modular tool FOCUS integrates various tools into one consistent user interface and provides consistent data. Without the need of manually converting data between tools during the design process, a shorter turnaround time can be achieved while reducing the risk of errors and inconsistent data. FOCUS uses a database, allowing concurrent design by multiple designers and tracking of design changes.

Main features of Focus 6

• Wind turbine design
• Rotor pre-design
• Detailed blade design with interactive 3D modeler
• Load set calculation according to international standards (IEC, GL, DNV)
• Results are accepted for certification
• Fatigue and strength analysis based on stress/strain time series
• Multi-user environment and tracking of all design changes
• In-house software of end-users can be integrated in the user interface
• World wide used by main players in industry
• Open architecture
• Support of external formats
• Graphical analysis of results
• Integrated help system

Structural blade design

FOCUS has a unique tool to interactively model rotor blades in detail. While defining the blade step-by-step, the interactive 3D visualization gives direct feedback of the design changes. Material properties, layer thicknesses and sequences can be displayed. This makes blade modeling in FOCUS user-friendly, with less risk of errors in user input. Material properties, layer thicknesses and sequences can be displayed. The user friendly interface is aimed to avoid input errors. Layers are defined in the model similar to blade manufacturing. Beginning with the layers at the outer surface of the blade, sequential layers are stacked in inwards direction.

Once the blade model is defined, other modules such as the turbine simulation models can retrieve the cross sectional properties at any radial position. Blade data such as usage per material can be viewed and exported both graphically and numerically.

The blade model can be exported to a thick shell element mesh for analysis with finite element solvers. The shell elements include full layup data.

An advanced beam model approach is used for the following structural analysis:

• Strain and stress based static strength evaluation
• Fatigue analyses based on time series
• Panel and cross section based buckling analyses
• Modal analyses
• Tip deflection calculations

All results can be presented both in tabular and graphical form.

Aeroelasticity I, Rotor pre-design

For the aeroelastic pre-design of rotor blades a dedicated module is available. With this module the aeroelastic performance of rotor blades can be determined without the need of a full turbine model or a detailed blade design. This module can compute the eigenmodes, frequencies and aeroelastic damping of the rotor blades. The theoretical basis is the beam bending theory, in which torsional deformation and transverse shear flexibility as well as many aerodynamic and structural dynamic coupling terms for bending and torsion dynamics are included.

Aeroelasticity II, Wind Turbine design

The module Aeroelasticity II, developed by ECN, calculates the combined aerodynamic and structural dynamic behaviour of a wind turbine in time domain. The build-in tower model gives a detailed and well-validated dynamic response of the tower including all mutual interactions with the turbine model up to the aerodynamics of the rotor. Alternatively, an external tower model can be linked using the Craig-Bampton method.

The rotor aerodynamics are solved on basis of the engineering BEM theory of which the sub-models for tip-loss, tangential induction, blade-tower interaction, oblique inflow effects, rotational effects) are combined on a physical basis.

A built-in PD controller is provided that includes rotor speed filtering and peak-shaving strategy. In addition, dedicated controllers can be linked.

A tool is provided that generates the input for load cases that are required for IEC or GL load set calculations. For this purpose models are available to simulate faulted conditions and emergency situations. The results are accepted for certification by GL and DNV.

In order to reduce the total turnaround time of load set calculations, loadcases can be calculated in parallel on computers with multi-core processors.

Using the job management system, loadcases can be calculated in parallel on multiple computers.

FOCUS 6 program options:

• Aeroelasticity I, Rotor pre-design
• Aeroelasticity II, Turbine design
• Structural Blade design

Features that are being implemented:

• Blade design FEM
• Earthquake loads
• Noise Emission (requires Aeroelasticity I)
• Offshore additions

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