Biome & Research Partners release peer-reviewed paper from WindEurope

The scientific measurements behind the performance of Biome’s FeatherEdge® serration technology has been published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series.

Biome CEO / CTO and Founder Ryan Church, alongside co-authors Sebastian Schmitter, and Matthew Cand of Hoare Lea LLP (UK) have produced the research paper "Impact of a Novel Flexible Serrated Trailing Edge in the Reduction of Far-Field Wind Turbine Noise Through Immission Point Measurements and Propagation Modelling".

Understanding the impact of novel technologies that have the potential to reduce the impact of noise at far-field locations is of interest for the entire wind industry.

The paper lays out the investigation carried out into the acoustic impact of Biome’s FeatherEdge novel trailing edge serration on a 6-MW class wind turbine in Germany. The investigation spanned several years and included measured data from both near-field (250m) testing to IEC (ed. 3) standards, and far-field (500m, 750m) immission point measurements to DIN45645-1:1996 standard.

The data shows that the novel serration is actively reducing the near-field noise by up to 2.1dB, and 1.2dB at 9m/s, but this grows to 3dB at the 750m far-field location. The reason for this is due to the specific octave bands in the low frequency section (below 1000 Hz) that are reduced more than higher frequency bands, up to 6.6dB at 250m, impeding the acoustic energy needed for propagation. An average reduction of 9.2dB below 1000Hz at 750m is seen, which is a significant value.

The article has been published to IOPscience online at https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/3232/1/012013 and a PDF version of the article can be downloaded here.

Biome’s Ryan Church (centre) at WindPower Europe with Biome colleagues DJ Kootstra (left) and Bryan Murphy.