Physics-Informed Neural Network surrogate model for bypassing Blade Element Momentum theory in wind turbine aerodynamic load estimation

This paper proposes the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), specifically Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs), for dynamic surrogate modelling of wind turbines. PINNs offer the flexibility to model complex relationships while incorporating physics-based constraints, enabling accurate representation of wind turbine dynamics. In this paper, a PINN-based surrogate model is developed for the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) aerodynamic model used in state-of-the-art numerical wind turbine simulations. The PINN model replaces the time-consuming root-finding process in BEM with high-dimensional regression, significantly improving computational efficiency. The PINN model is trained using data generated from a numerical model of the IEA-15MW reference wind turbine, and its performance is compared against conventional data-driven Neural Network (DDNN) models. The proposed surrogate model provides more efficient and accurate evaluations of wind turbine responses compared with traditional surrogate modelling approaches. A significant computational advantage is obtained by using the developed surrogate models with a forty-fold speedup demonstrated compared to the BEM model. Replacing the BEM model with the PINN-based surrogate model for load computation in the numerical model used for dynamic analysis results in an overall reduction of 35% in computational time for a complete dynamic simulation. This is a substantial improvement in efficiency without sacrificing accuracy — the maximum Mean Absolute Error (MAE) values for the surrogate models are of the order of $10^{-2}$, which shows that the surrogate models can predict the angle of attack at any blade node with a discrepancy of less than $0.5°$. The surrogate models significantly reduce computational time while maintaining high accuracy, making them a promising approach for simulating wind turbine dynamics, especially in fields such as reliability analysis or fatigue estimation where many simulations are necessary.