Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 2 Summer 2018 | Page 34

STORY & PHOTO BY ROSAIRE BUSHEY
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
namic wake meandering of
floating wind turbines.”
Wake meandering looks at
the corkscrew airflows that
come off the blades of large
wind turbines. In the same
way ships make wakes in the
water, wind turbines create
airflow wakes that create tur-
bulence, negatively affecting
turbines located in close prox-
imity to each other (typical
for wind farms), decreasing
the efficiency of the unit.
Wise receives
Fulbright grant
A year of study abroad in
Sweden gave Adam Wise a
glimpse of Scandinavia. Now,
Wise will have another 10
months to see the area after
having earning a Fulbright
research grant.
Wise, who graduated from
mechanical engineering in
May, will use the Fulbright
to conduct research on wake
meandering of floating wind
turbines at the Norwegian
University of Science and
Technology (NTNU) in
Trondheim, Norway.
“I started my application
in the spring of last year and
MOMENTUM
over the summer developed a
proposal with Erin Bachynski,
an associate professor in NT-
NU’s Department of Marine
Technology,” said Wise.
Wise met Bachynski
through his supervisor during
an internship at the National
Renewable Energy Laborato-
ry, a Department of Energy
facility in Colorado.
“I said I was interested in
working with her and said
I’d like to write a Fulbright
proposal,” said Wise. “She
showed me what she was
working on and I created a
proposal to look at aerody-
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Wise will use a 10-mega-
watt turbine developed by
the Technical University of
Denmark to refine numerical
models of the air as it comes
off the blades.
“I want to characterize how
the wakes adversely affect
floating wind turbines,”
explained Wise. “Because
the turbines are offshore, the
airflow recovers less quickly
than land-based turbines, and
when you add in the heaving,
pitching, and rolling mo-
tions induced by the waves,
wake meandering can have
a significant impact on the
energy output of downwind
turbines.”
When he finishes the Ful-
bright program, Wise said he
plans to continue his studies
in graduate school, but hasn’t
yet decided where he will go.
Read the whole story at
VTNews.