Legacy products

Bladed Knowledge Centre Downloads Legacy products

Legacy products are out of support and are no longer developed or maintained - no further bug fixes will be released for these products.

Bladed 4.15

Bladed 4.15 provides users with a new internal force calculation for complex sub-structure models, improved performance, support for Ubuntu 22.04.3, and more demo models to get you started, including an example of external coupling to MoorDyn.

Bladed 4.15 also introduces a new online documentation alongside several other small improvements.

Improved internal force calculation

The conventional internal force calculation (IFC) in Bladed may struggle to achieve equilibrium for floating sub-structures with pre-tensioned cables, leading to incorrect loading discontinuities. A new IFC model has been developed to address this issue, ensuring equilibrium at each timestep.

Example co-simulation link between Bladed and MoorDyn

A performant dynamic mooring line physics engine MoorDyn can be coupled to Bladed for time domain analysis of floating wind turbines. The coupling is completed using the external loads DLL and an example script is provided with Bladed that demonstrates how to couple MoorDyn with Bladed to include dynamic mooring lines on floating models.

Linux operating system upgrade

The dtbladed calculation for version 4.15 on Linux has been upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04.3, replacing the previously supported version of Ubuntu 18.04.3.

New online documentation system

We are migrating the documentation to a new online system where information will be searchable and collected in one place. The transition begins in 4.15 with the provision of the online theory documentation that replaces the theory manual PDF provided in the release.

Other minor changes

• Performance improvements by approximately 30% for large complex jacket structures
• Users can now import AQWA LIS files from AQWA v13 to AQWA v2023 in Bladed
• Support for variable time step in superelement wave load input file
• Fixed averaging issue with blade shear centre offset
• Fixed handling of "Realtime factor” for hardware test simulations to allow faster/slower than real-time runs

PLEASE NOTE: The GUI and dtbladed version numbers in the 4.15.0.5 release appear as 4.15.0.5405

Bladed 4.13

Bladed 4.13 empowers users to use their own customisations with Bladed, through enhanced external interfaces and an example external controller. Bladed’s offshore jacket design functionality with Sesam now includes local joint flexibility.

External loads DLL extensions

The external loads DLL interface has been extended, giving users greater power and flexibility to implement their own models and logic together with Bladed. Furthermore, the interface has been upgraded for improved usability, and multiple independent external load DLLs can be defined.

Example external controller

The Bladed “internal” controller is no longer supported, and instead an example external controller is provided. The example controller source code is provided so users can understand and edit the control logic directly. Various control strategies are supported, as is multi-rotor control.

Improved fidelity of offshore jacket modelling

The integrated fixed offshore wind turbine structural analysis workflow between Bladed and Sesam has been enhanced. Bladed can now import local joint flexibility data for jacket models exported from Sesam Wind Manager 6.0 (due for release in 2022 Q4). Bladed now also outputs line loads which will be used in a future Sesam Wind Manager release to improve post-processing accuracy.

Webinar

Watch our webinar to learn more about the new features and improvements in Bladed 4.13.

Bladed 4.12

Time domain simulation speed has been significantly improved for Bladed 4.12. The improvements have been realised by refinements to the “Implicit Newmark beta” integrator, and algorithm optimisation for cases with many structural bodies (e.g. the non-linear blade model). Bladed 4.12 models with a non-linear blade model now run between three and five times faster relative to Bladed 4.10.

Other new features

• The integrated fixed offshore wind turbine structural analysis workflow between Bladed and Sesam has been enhanced. Bladed can now import member end offset data from exported jacket models from Sesam Wind Manager 5.3 (due for release in 2022 Q2).
• The 6 Degree of Freedom gearbox DLL interface, which is included in the Bladed Advanced Transmission Interface module, has been upgraded.
• The flexible yaw bearing model has been extended to include high speed shaft flexibility and allow multiple load banks.
• Batch version 1.6 comprises of new features and enhancements that build upon existing functionality.
• Other minor updates including aerodynamics for floating turbines, and post-processing performance improvements.

Webinar

Watch our webinar to learn more about improvements and new features in Bladed 4.12.

Bladed 4.11

A new integrator has been developed that allows time domain simulations to be approximately twice as fast as previous versions of Bladed. This new fixed step “implicit Newmark beta” integrator allows time steps of 20ms and carries out equilibrium iterations to find an accurate solution to the equations of motion. This more performant and robust integration scheme has shown good agreement with existing Bladed integrators such as Runge-Kutta for a range of turbine models.

In addition, Bladed 4.11 on Linux now uses the MKL math library (Netlib was used previously). This improves the performance of Linux for complex models, bringing it in line with Windows simulations times.

Watch our webinar to learn more about improvements and new features in Bladed 4.11.

Bladed 4.10

New features in Bladed 4.10:

• “Legacy Bugs” section added to UI to re-enable functionality from earlier versions. This means that users can achieve consistency between dtbladed calculation results between versions 4.8, 4.9 and 4.10.
• New interface methods have been added to the External Loads DLL.

Older Bladed releases

Bladed Results API 1.0

The Results API allows the automation of operations involving Bladed results files by writing scripts. The Results API is a standalone product which complements the Bladed Project and Batch APIs. The Results API allows the user to:

• Search for Bladed runs in a folder
• Explore what data is available in each run
• Access the data
• Add additional data to a run that the user has post-processed themselves

It is possible to use the Results API with Microsoft .NET or Python. The installer provides both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the API. This product does not require a Bladed license for its use.