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Photo Friday: Titan supercomputer looks at cold weather wind

Much of the world’s best wind resources lie in colder climates that can prove challenging for current wind turbine designs. This visualization is from research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where researchers are simulating the freezing of water droplets in order to help them in developing advanced wind turbines for cold climates.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Much of the world's best wind resources lie in colder climates that can prove challenging for current wind turbine designs. This visualization is from research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where researchers are simulating the freezing of water droplets in order to help them in developing advanced wind turbines for cold climates. The team uses Titan - one of the world's largest supercomputers - to run these simulations.

Photo credit: M. Matheson, US Department of Energy - Oak Ridge National Laboratory.