Wind Energy Research

UTSA has over 300 publications, 12 textbooks, and obtained over 25 grants in fields that translate to better Lifecycle and Operations, this core competency is our bread and butter, where UTSA creates a value proposition and fundamental research to the wind energy industry.  Our multidisciplinary research experience in systems of systems, artificial intelligence, reliability, fatigue and fracture, computational fluid dynamics and cloud computing enable the wind energy industry sector to benefit greatly from real-time lifecycle and operations of complex, dynamic systems.  The following are the 7 cores of competency, which integrated offer the best and most comprehensive team for Lifecycle and Operations of Wind Farms:

• Real-Time Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) through Cloud Computing
• Wind Turbine Simulation using state-of-the-art aero-servo-elastic codes
• Accelerated Life Testing and material degradation of metal and composite structures
• Fatigue and Fracture techniques extracted from the aerospace industry and several contracts with Boeing, FAA and others.
• Prognostics and Prediction of Failures of Drive-trains
• Statistical and post-processing optimization of systems
• Self-learning systems performance through Artificial Intelligence and Smart Controls

The integrated UTSA Wind Energy Research Program layout can be seen here.

NSF $400K grant supports UTSA wind energy research

UTSA Wind Energy Research Program layout

Rolando Vega, Ph.D., Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute

Harry Millwater, Ph.D., Department of Mechanical Engineering

Kiran Bhaganagar, Ph.D., Department of Mechanical Engineering

Victor Maldonado, Ph.D., Department of Mechanical Engineering 

Arturo Montoya, Ph.D., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Bing Dong, Ph.D., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Mo Jamshidi, Ph.D., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

David Han, Ph.D., Department of Management Science and Statistics