Leveraging generative artificial intelligence to bridge domain gaps in wind turbine research

Abstract

A central challenge in wind turbine health monitoring is the scarcity of real-world data due to limited instrumentation, leading researchers to rely on simulation models that often suffer from reduced fidelity. However, even within simulation environments, discrepancies arise because of modeling assumptions, and configuration fidelities, creating domain gaps that limit the transferability of learned representations. To investigate domain translation under controlled conditions, this project explores the use of generative artificial intelligence, specifically cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (CGANs), to bridge the gap between OpenFAST simulation models representing 1.5 MW and 5 MW wind turbines. A physics-informed CGAN architecture is introduced, where a simplified turbine tower dynamics model is incorporated into the training loss to ensure physically consistent outputs. Quantitative results showed moderate to high agreement in frequency-domain features. Incorporating the physics-informed loss function improved the R² values by 30%, reduced the RMSE from 1.39 to 1.1 m/s², and reduced training time by 82%. Furthermore, under increased turbulence intensity (IEC Category A), the RMSE remained stable at approximately 1.1 m/s². While the present study is entirely simulation-based, it establishes a pipeline for evaluating physics-informed generative domain translation, which may serve as a foundation for future simulation-to-reality validation studies.