Audience
Wind energy researchers, engineers, and developers requiring a tool for simulating the dynamic response of various wind turbine configurations
About OpenFAST
OpenFAST is an open source wind turbine simulation tool developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It builds upon the FAST v8 code, integrating aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, control systems, and structural dynamics to enable comprehensive, coupled nonlinear aero-hydro-servo-elastic time-domain simulations of wind turbines. OpenFAST supports various configurations, including land-based, fixed-bottom offshore, and floating offshore turbines. The platform aims to foster an open source developer community across research laboratories, industry, and academia, providing a robust software engineering framework with well-documented source code, automated testing, and a multi-platform build system. Key organizational changes from FAST v8.16 to OpenFAST include the establishment of a new GitHub repository consolidating glue codes, modules, and compiling tools; updated version numbering; and the introduction of unit testing at the subroutine level.