Enhancement of Free Vortex Filament Method for Aerodynamic Loads on Rotor Blades
Paper in proceeding, 2014

The aerodynamics of a wind turbine is governed by the flow around the rotor, where the prediction of air loads on rotor blades in different operational conditions and its relation to rotor structural dynamics is one of the most important challenges in wind turbine rotor blade design. Because of the unsteady flow field around wind turbine blades, prediction of aerodynamic loads with high level of accuracy is difficult and increases the uncertainty of load calculations. A free vortex wake method, based on the potential, inviscid and irrotational flow, is developed to study the aerodynamic loads. Since it is based on the potential, inviscid and irrotational flow, it cannot be used to predict viscous phenomena such as drag and boundary layer separation. Therefore it must be coupled to the tabulated airfoil data to take the viscosity effects into account. The results are compared with the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) method and the GENUVP code.

free wake

wind turbine aerodynamics

dynamic stall

lifting surface

vortex filament

aerodynamic loads

potential flow

Author

Hamidreza Abedi

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics

Swedish Wind Power Technology Center (SWPTC)

Lars Davidson

Swedish Wind Power Technology Center (SWPTC)

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics

Spyros Voutsinas

National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)

ASME 2014 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, Montreal, Canada

Vol. 6B

Areas of Advance

Building Futures (2010-2018)

Materials Science

Subject Categories

Fluid Mechanics and Acoustics

DOI

10.1115/1.4035887

More information

Latest update

10/24/2019