Development of a Low-Speed Wind Turbine for Brazilian Onshore Areas: A Preliminary and Conceptual Design

This article presents a comprehensive design study of a low-speed wind turbine optimized for regions with weak wind resources, with a particular focus on Brazil’s extensive territories. The research challenges conventional turbine designs by incorporating innovative strategies to enhance aerodynamic performance, structural integrity, and cost efficiency. Consolidated computational tools were integrated with optimization algorithms, creating an innovative multidisciplinary optimization framework. Multiple configurations were assessed based on energy output, load mitigation, and economic viability, leading to the identification of promising designs that effectively balance performance targets with practical constraints. The study highlights how a structured multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) approach, applied during the preliminary and conceptual design phases, enables the development of configurations well-adapted to low-wind-speed environments. These findings result into the output configuration achieving a rated wind speed of 6.45 m/s, and moreover they offer a scalable framework for future research and field validation in low-wind-speed applications. Therefore, the objective of developing a viable wind turbine prototype using custom multidisciplinary optimization models was successfully achieved.