Modelling Smart Wind Turbine Blades

Abstract

The study investigates the effect of distributed trailing edge suction on the dynamics of flow for wind turbine application. The near-tip region of the turbine blade accounts for significant amount of losses due to the disturbed ow conditions in that region; this contributes towards the loss in the power output of the turbine model. The turbine model in consideration for the present research is the Nordtank 500/41 with 500 kW power output, and using NACA 63-415 aerofoil profile for the entire blade span. The Navier-Stokes solver ANSYS FLUENT was used to simulate distributed suction through a porous media using the RANS and the DES approach. Simulations demonstrate the successful implementation of the boundary conditions for the modified design with results showing improvement in the aerodynamic characteristics and the downstream wake profile. Optimum results were obtained for the suction velocity, vs = 0.5 m/s. A hybrid CFD-BEM technique is described for combining the aerodynamic results obtained from the CFD simulations to the BEM model in order to take into account for the rotational effects. The important feature of this approach is the reduced computational efforts for solving the entire turbine model for performance analysis using the CFD approach alone. Results illustrate an improvement in the power output of the turbine model with distributed suction at the expense of small amount of energy required for its implementation.