This paper provides a summary of the work done within Phase III of the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration, Continued, with Correlation and unCertainty (OC6) project, under the International Energy Agency Wind Technology Collaboration Programme Task 30. This phase focused on validating the aerodynamic loading on a wind turbine rotor undergoing large motion caused by a floating support structure. Numerical models of the Technical University of Denmark 10 MW reference wind turbine were validated using measurement data from a 1:75 scale test performed during the UNsteady Aerodynamics for FLOating Wind (UNAFLOW) project and a follow-on experimental campaign, both performed at the Politecnico di Milano wind tunnel. Validation of the models was performed by comparing the loads for steady (fixed platform) and unsteady (harmonic motion of the platform) wind conditions. For the unsteady wind conditions, the platform was forced to oscillate in the surge and pitch directions under several frequencies and amplitudes. These oscillations result in a wind variation that impacts the rotor loads (e.g., thrust and torque). For the conditions studied in these tests, the system aerodynamic response was almost steady. Only a small hysteresis in airfoil performance undergoing angle of attack variations in attached flow was observed. During the experiments, the rotor speed and blade pitch angle were held constant. However, in real wind turbine operating conditions, the surge and pitch variations would result in rotor speed variations and/or blade pitch actuations, depending on the wind turbine controller region that the system is operating. Additional simulations with these control parameters were conducted to verify the fidelity of different models. Participant results showed, in general, a good agreement with the experimental measurements and the need to account for dynamic inflow when there are changes in the flow conditions due to the rotor speed variations or blade pitch actuations in response to surge and pitch motion. Numerical models not accounting for dynamic inflow effects predicted rotor loads that were 9 % lower in amplitude during rotor speed variations and 18 % higher in amplitude during blade pitch actuations.

Organic rankine cycles (ORC) are renowned to be attractive energy conversion systems for the thermal energy sources in the small-to-medium power range. A critical component in the ORC technology is the turbo-expander; the difficulties involved in the accurate thermodynamic modeling of organic fluids and, especially, the complex gasdynamic phenomena that are commonly found in ORC turbines may result in relatively low efficiency and in performance reduction at partial loads. In this perspective, a relevant path of development can be outlined in the evaluation of nonconventional turbine architectures, such as the radial-outward or centrifugal turbine. In the present work, a critical evaluation of the feasibility of multistage transonic centrifugal turbines for ORC systems is presented. To support this study, a two-step design procedure, specifically oriented to ORC turbines, was developed. The methodology includes a 1D mean-line code coupled to an external optimizer to perform a preliminary design of the machine. The selected configurations are then verified with a CFD (computational fluid dynamics)-based throughflow solver, able to deal with any flow regime and to treat fluids described by arbitrary equations of state. The overall procedure is applied to the design of two different turbines of the same target power of about 1 MW, the former representing a transonic six-stage turbine and the latter a supersonic three-stage turbine. The two machines are characterized by very different shape and comparable performances. The results are extensively discussed in terms of both overall data and detailed flow fields.