Performance Enhancement Analysis of a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine by Vortex Trapping Cavity

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Khaoula Qaissi ◽  
Omer A Elsayed ◽  
Mustapha Faqir ◽  
Elhachmi Essadiqi

Abstract A wind turbine blade has the particularity of containing twisted and tapered thick airfoils. The challenge with this configuration is the highly separated flow in the region of high twist. This research presents a numerical investigation of the effectiveness of a Vortex Trapping Cavity (VTC) on the aerodynamics of the National renewable Energy laboratory (NREL) Phase VI wind turbine. First, simulations are conducted on the S809 profile to study the fluid flow compared to the airfoil with the redesigned VTC. Secondly, the blade is simulated with and without VTC to assess its effect on the torque and the flow patterns. The results show that for high angles of incidence at Rec=106, the lift coefficient increases by 10% and the wake region appears smaller for the case with VTC. For wind speeds larger than 10 m/s, the VTC improves the torque by 3.9%. This is due to the separation that takes place in the vicinity of the VTC and leads to trapping early separation eddies inside the cell. These eddies roll up forming a coherent laminar vortex structure, which in turn sheds periodically out of the cell. This phenomenon favourably reshapes excessive flow separation, reenergizes the boundary layer and globally improves blade torque.

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 4983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Sumait Sy ◽  
Binoe Eugenio Abuan ◽  
Louis Angelo Macapili Danao

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable energy sources, and the most developed energy extraction device that harnesses this energy is the Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT). Increasing the efficiency of HAWTs is one important topic in current research with multiple aspects to look at such as blade design and rotor array optimization. This study looked at the effect of wingtip devices, a split winglet, in particular, to reduce the drag induced by the wind vortices at the blade tip, hence increasing performance. Split winglet implementation was done using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) Phase VI sequence H. In total, there are four (4) blade configurations that are simulated, the base NREL Phase VI sequence H blade, an extended version of the previous blade to equalize length of the blades, the base blade with a winglet and the base blade with split winglet. Results at wind speeds of 7 m/s to 15 m/s show that adding a winglet increased the power generation, on an average, by 1.23%, whereas adding a split winglet increased it by 2.53% in comparison to the extended blade. The study also shows that the increase is achieved by reducing the drag at the blade tip and because of the fact that the winglet and split winglet generating lift themselves. This, however, comes at a cost, i.e., an increase in thrust of 0.83% and 2.05% for the blades with winglet and split winglet, respectively, in comparison to the extended blade.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poornima Menon ◽  
Srinivas G

Abstract Wind turbines are one of the most prominent and popular sources of renewable energy, of which, horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) are the majorly chosen design for wind machines. These turbines rotate about the horizontal axis which is parallel to the ground. They comprise of aerodynamic blades (generated from the desired airfoil), that may be twisted or tapered as per the design requirements. The blades are attached to a rotor which is located either upwind or downwind. To help wind the orientation of the turbines, the upwind rotors have a tail vane, while the downwind rotors are coned which in turn help them to self-orient. One of the major reasons for the popularity of the horizontal wind turbine, is its ability to generate a larger amount of electricity for a given amount of wind. Due to its popularity, the enhancement in the design of HAWTs, is a major focus area for research. In the present study, a scaled-down CFD model of the NREL Phase VI was validated against the numerical and experimental data. The model used had a dual blade rotor and applied the S809 airfoil. The simulations were carried out using a rotating mesh in ANSYS Fluent. Validation was carried out for 3 velocities — 7m/s, 10m/s and 20m/s. Once validation was carried out, turbine was modified with the addition of vortex generators, in the form of cylindrical protrusions that reduce flow separation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 291-294 ◽  
pp. 425-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Moshfeghi ◽  
Kun Lu ◽  
Yong Hui Xie

This paper proposes a new method for horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) angle of attack (AOA) determination. Despite common circular planes for data extraction, here, data is extracted on rectangular planes. NREL Phase VI is used for validation of the method. Results show that even in a high velocity wind the proposed plane can be an appropriate choice. Furthermore, the average radial distributions of axial and tangential induction factors are calculated based on the velocity values at the planes. Moreover, local normal force coefficients are calculated and then, the local AOA are compared with 2D results and other 3D values for different wind speeds.


Author(s):  
Sarun Benjanirat ◽  
Lakshmi N. Sankar ◽  
Guanpeng Xu

The performance of the NREL Phase VI horizontal axis wind turbine has been studied with a 3-D unsteady Navier-Stokes solver. This solver is third order accurate in space and second order accurate in time, and uses an implicit time marching scheme. Calculations were done for a range of wind conditions from 7 m/s to 25 m/s where the flow conditions ranged from attached flow to massively separated flow. A variety of turbulence models were studied: Baldwin-Lomax Model, Spalart-Allmaras one-equation model, and k-ε two equations model with and without wall corrections. It was found all the models predicted the normal forces and associated bending moments well, but most of them had difficulties in modeling the chord wise forces, power generation, and pitching moments. It was found that the k-ε model with near wall corrections did the best job of predicting most the quantities with acceptable levels of accuracy. Additional studies aimed at transition model development, and grid sensitivity studies in the tip region are deemed necessary to improve the correlation with experiments.


Author(s):  
Lakshmi N. Sankar ◽  
Chanin Tongchitpakdee ◽  
Mina Zaki ◽  
Robert Englar

The aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine rotor equipped with circulation control technology is investigated using a three-dimensional unsteady viscous flow analysis. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Phase VI horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) is chosen as the baseline configuration. Experimental data for the baseline case is used to validate the flow solver, prior to its use in exploring these concepts. Steady and pulsed Coanda jet calculations have been performed for axial and yawed flows at several wind conditions. Results presented include radial distribution of the normal and tangential forces at selected radial locations, shaft torque, and root flap bending moments. At low wind speeds where the flow is fully attached, it is found that steady and pulsed Coanda jets at the trailing edge are both effective at increasing circulation resulting in an increase of lift and the chordwise thrust force. This leads to an increased amount of net power compared to the baseline configuration for moderate blowing coefficients. Preliminary calculations are also shown to demonstrate how Coanda jets may be used as jet spoilers to alleviate structural loads under extreme wind conditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
Yui-Chuin Shiah ◽  
Chia Hsiang Chang ◽  
Yu-Jen Chen ◽  
Ankam Vinod Kumar Reddy

ABSTRACT Generally, the environmental wind speeds in urban areas are relatively low due to clustered buildings. At low wind speeds, an aerodynamic stall occurs near the blade roots of a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT), leading to decay of the power coefficient. The research targets to design canards with optimal parameters for a small-scale HAWT system operated at variable rotational speeds. The design was to enhance the performance by delaying the aerodynamic stall near blade roots of the HAWT to be operated at low wind speeds. For the optimal design of canards, flow fields of the sample blades with and without canards were both simulated and compared with the experimental data. With the verification of our simulations, Taguchi analyses were performed to seek the optimum parameters of canards. This study revealed that the peak performance of the optimized canard system operated at 540 rpm might be improved by ∼35%.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvaro Gonzalez ◽  
Xabier Munduate

This work undertakes an aerodynamic analysis over the parked and the rotating NREL Phase VI wind turbine blade. The experimental sequences from NASA Ames wind tunnel selected for this study respond to the parked blade and the rotating configuration, both for the upwind, two-bladed wind turbine operating at nonyawed conditions. The objective is to bring some light into the nature of the flow field and especially the type of stall behavior observed when 2D aerofoil steady measurements are compared to the parked blade and the latter to the rotating one. From averaged pressure coefficients together with their standard deviation values, trailing and leading edge separated flow regions have been found, with the limitations of the repeatability of the flow encountered on the blade. Results for the parked blade show the progressive delay from tip to root of the trailing edge separation process, with respect to the 2D profile, and also reveal a local region of leading edge separated flow or bubble at the inner, 30% and 47% of the blade. For the rotating blade, results at inboard 30% and 47% stations show a dramatic suppression of the trailing edge separation, and the development of a leading edge separation structure connected with the extra lift.


2021 ◽  
Vol 321 ◽  
pp. 03004
Author(s):  
Shalini Verma ◽  
Akshoy Ranjan Paul ◽  
Anuj Jain ◽  
Firoz Alam

Wind energy is one of the renewable energy resources which is clean and sustainable energy and the wind turbine is used for harnessing energy from the wind. The blades are the key components of a wind turbine to convert wind energy into rotational energy. Recently, wingtip devices are used in the blades of horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT), which decreases the vortex and drag, while increases the lift and thereby improve the performance of the turbine. In the present study, a winglet is used at the tip of an NREL phase VI wind turbine blade. Solidworks, Pointwise, and Ansys-Fluent are used for geometric modeling, computational grid generation, and CFD simulation, respectively. The computational result obtained using SST k-ω turbulence modeling is well validated with the experimental data of NREL at 5 and 7 m/s of wind speeds. Numerical investigation of stall characteristics is carried out for wingleted blade at higher turbulence intensity (21% and 25%) and angle of attack (00 to 300 at 50 intervals) at 7 m/s wind speed. The result found that wingletd blade delay stall to 150 for both the cases of turbulence intensity. Increasing the turbulence intensity increases the lift coefficient at stall angle but drag coefficient also increases and thus a lower aerodynamic performance (CL/CD ratio = 13) is obtained. Wingleted blade improves the performance as the intensity of vortices is smaller compared to baseline blade


Author(s):  
Earl P. N. Duque ◽  
Michael D. Burklund ◽  
Wayne Johnson

A vortex lattice code, CAMRAD II, and a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stoke code, OVERFLOW-D2, were used to predict the aerodynamic performance of a two-bladed horizontal axis wind turbine. All computations were compared with experimental data that was collected at the NASA Ames Research Center 80-by 120-Foot Wind Tunnel. Computations were performed for both axial as well as yawed operating conditions. Various stall delay models and dynamics stall models were used by the CAMRAD II code. Comparisons between the experimental data and computed aerodynamic loads show that the OVERFLOW-D2 code can accurately predict the power and spanwise loading of a wind turbine rotor.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 168781401989211
Author(s):  
Deyaa Nabil Elshebiny ◽  
Ali AbdelFattah Hashem ◽  
Farouk Mohammed Owis

This article introduces novel blade tip geometric modification to improve the aerodynamic performance of horizontal-axis wind turbine by adding auxiliary cascading blades toward the tip region. This study focuses on the new turbine shape and how it enhances the turbine performance in comparison with the classical turbine. This study is performed numerically for National Renewable Energy Laboratory Phase II (non-optimized wind turbine) taking into consideration the effect of adding different cascade configurations on the turbine performance using ANSYS FLUENT program. The analysis of single-auxiliary and double-auxiliary cascade blades has shown an impact on increasing the turbine power of 28% and 76%, respectively, at 72 r/min and 12.85 m/s of wind speed. Knowing that the performance of cascaded wind turbine depends on the geometry, solidity and operating conditions of the original blade; therefore, these results are not authorized for other cases.


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