Wind Turbine Aerodynamics. Wind energy
is the fastest growing source of renewable energy. 
It is free of greenhouse gas emissions and
any water use. Wind energy has become 
and is still developing to be an important 
contributor to the world's energy portfolio.
Over the centuries, wind turbines have evolved from
simple windmills that were used for grinding grain for a 
single village, to sophisticated machines that can power hundreds 
of homes. My name is Sven Schmitz, I'm an
assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the Pennsylvania State
University. My research program in rotary
wind aerodynamics embraces the areas of wind energy and
rotorcraft aeromechanics, both experimentally 
and computationally with fundamental research in fluid
mechanics of rotary wings and wakes. 
Wind Turbine Aerodynamics is a graduate level course 
offered through Penn State World Campus, the RESS Program, 
and Aerospace Engineering. Students taking this 
course will learn all the necessary skills to design
and improve upon current state of the art
wind turbine blades. The online curriculum 
is divided into lessons with each lesson 
focusing on a particular topic in aerodynamics 
pertinent to wind turbines. The material online will
include videos, text,
and other interactive components. We will begin
with the fundamental fluid dynamic principles of power
generation and derive theoretical limits.
We then put a focus on blade element momentum 
theory to derive rotor thrust and power. 
We will learn about air foils and how desired air foil 
characteristics change along the blade length and
what the effect is on the maximum attainable power of a
wind turbine system. We will understand that rotor
aerodynamics and rotor dynamic loads, do 
not always suggest the same optimum design. Following
we will extend our analysis to 
vortex theory, deriving prescribed and
free wake vortex method. We'll talk about
discretization of vortex filaments, 
the Biot-Savart Law and how that all effects
the computational costs and the assumptions
within the field. We will use the XTurb code,
a lifting line based wind turbine design and analysis
software that I have been developing here at Penn State for 
our homework assignments and design exercises. 
We will also give an introduction to optimization methods
to maximize power, minimize root flap bending moment,
etc. Followed by an introduction
to computational fluid dynamics. The
course goes ahead by talking about the effect of sheared inflow
and turbulence on rotor dynamic loads. 
We we also learn about the important phenomenon of stall delay
and how it effects inboard blade sections. 
At the end, we'll take about innovative concepts
for wind turbine noise reduction. Interested? 
Well, then you should contact us!
Prerequisites? An undergraduate course in 
fluid dynamics would be ideal. What else do you need? 
A lot of motivation and passion for wind energy. 
I'll see you on the other side of the screen!
