CURRENT RESEARCH My dissertation will take a step toward understanding the limitations of modeling and simulation of wind turbine

blades by evaluating the trade-offs of fidelity-to-data and robustness-to-uncertainties. The explicit use of Verification and Validation (V&V) exercises and Info Gap Decision Theory will provide a holistic assessment of the predictive capabilities of numerical models, and will help establish confidence in model predictions. The attempt to analyze and quantify robustness-to-uncertainty of numerical models has gained little attention in previous studies. This work will contribute to the success of full scale multi-physics modeling of wind turbines. Furthermore, this work has the potential to guide future M&S efforts that are computationally tractable and cost effective for studying the dynamic behavior of both wind turbines and wind plants in order to prolong the service life, increase the energy capturing efficiency, and optimize wind plant layouts.

Figure 1: Comparison of the Experimental Set-up (top) and Finite Element Model (bottom) of the CX-100 wind turbine blade. PUBLICATIONS Van Buren, K.L., Atamturktur, Model Form Error of Alternate Strategies: Shell Type Wind Turbine Blades, Wind Engineering, in review. Mollineaux, M.G., Van Buren, K.L., Hemez, F.M., Atamturktur, S., Simulating the Dynamics of Wind Turbine Blades: Part I, Model Development and Verification, Wind Energy, in review. Van Buren, K.L., Mollineaux, M.G., Hemez, F.M., Atamturktur, S., Simulating the Dynamics of Wind Turbine Blades: Part II, Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification, Wind Energy, in review. Van Buren, K.L., Canfield, J., Hemez, F., Sauer, J., Code Verification of the HIGRAD Computational Fluid Dynamics Solver, Los Alamos Technical Report, in preparation. Van Buren, K.L., Hemez, F.M., Atamturktur, S., Demonstrating Predictive Capability of Validated Wind Turbine Blade Models, 30th International Modal Analysis Conference, Jacksonville, Florida, January 30-February 2, 2012. Van Buren, K.L., Predictive Modeling of Wind Turbine Blades, MS Thesis, Clemson University, 2011. Mollineaux, M. G., Van Buren, K. L., and Hemez, F. M., Simulating the Dynamics of Wind Turbine Blades: Part I, Model Development and Verification, 13th AIAA Non-deterministic Approaches Conference, Denver, Colorado, April 4-7, 2011. Van Buren, K. L., Mollineaux, M. G., and Hemez, F. M., Simulating the Dynamics of Wind Turbine Blades: Part II, Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification, 13th AIAA Non-deterministic Approaches Conference, Denver, Colorado, April 4-7, 2011. Van Buren, K. L., and Atamturktur, S., Model Form Error of Alternate Modeling Strategies: Shell Type Wind Turbine Blades, 29th International Modal Analysis Conference, Jacksonville, Florida, January 31-February 3, 2011. AWARDS AND HONORS Los Alamos National Laboratory 2010 and 2011 Summer Internship Women of Wind Energy 2010 Rudd Mayer Fellowship Clemson University Full Time Graduate Research Assistantship