Enhancement of Free Vortex Filament Method for Aerodynamic Loads on Rotor Blades
Journal article, 2017

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. An in-house vortex lattice free wake (VLFW) code, based on the inviscid, incompressible, and irrotational flow (potential flow), was developed to study the aerodynamic loads. Since it is based on the potential flow, it cannot be used to predict viscous phenomena such as drag and boundary layer separation. Therefore, it must be coupled to tabulated airfoil data to take the viscosity effects into account. Additionally, a dynamic approach must be introduced to modify the aerodynamic coefficients for unsteady operating conditions. This approach, which is called dynamic stall, adjusts the lift, the drag, and the moment coefficients for each blade element on the basis of the two dimensional (2D) static airfoil data together with the correction for separated flow. Two different turbines, NREL and MEXICO, are used in the simulations. Predicted normal and tangential forces using the VLFW method are compared with the blade element momentum (BEM) method, the GENUVP code, and the MEXICO wind tunnel measurements. The results show that coupling to the 2D static airfoil data improves the load and power predictions while employing the dynamic stall model to take the time-varying operating conditions into consideration is crucial.

Free vortex wake model

Extended ONERA model

Wind turbine

Yawed flow

Dynamic stall model

Aerodynamic load

MEXICO turbine

Vortex method

Author

Hamidreza Abedi

Swedish Wind Power Technology Center (SWPTC)

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics

Lars Davidson

Swedish Wind Power Technology Center (SWPTC)

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics

Spyros Voutsinas

National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)

Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Transactions of the ASME

0199-6231 (ISSN) 15288986 (eISSN)

Vol. 139 3 Article number 031007- 031007

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Energy

Materials Science

Subject Categories

Fluid Mechanics and Acoustics

DOI

10.1115/1.4035887

More information

Latest update

6/8/2018 8