Design and Analysis of Wind Turbine Blades: Winglet, Tubercle, and Slotted

Author(s):  
Alka Gupta ◽  
Abdulrahman Alsultan ◽  
R. S. Amano ◽  
Sourabh Kumar ◽  
Andrew D. Welsh

Energy is the heart of today’s civilization and the demand seems to be increasing with our growing population. Alternative energy solutions are the future of energy, whereas the fossil-based fuels are finite and deemed to become extinct. The design of the wind turbine blade is the main governing factor that affects power generation from the wind turbine. Different airfoils, angle of twist and blade dimensions are the parameters that control the efficiency of the wind turbine. This study is aimed at investigating the aerodynamic performance of the wind turbine blade. In the present paper, we discuss innovative blade designs using the NACA 4412 airfoil, comparing them with a straight swept blade. The wake region was measured in the lab with a straight blade. All the results with different designs of blades were compared for their performance. A complete three-dimensional computational analysis was carried out to compare the power generation in each case for different wind speeds. It was found from the numerical analysis that the slotted blade yielded the most power generation among the other blade designs.

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3.27) ◽  
pp. 456
Author(s):  
Albi . ◽  
M Dev Anand ◽  
G M. Joselin Herbert

The aerofoils of wind turbine blades have crucial influence on aerodynamic efficiency of wind turbine. There are numerous amounts of research being performed on aerofoils of wind turbines. Initially, I have done a brief literature survey on wind turbine aerofoil. This project involves the selection of a suitable aerofoil section for the proposed wind turbine blade. A comprehensive study of the aerofoil behaviour is implemented using 2D modelling. NACA 4412 aerofoil profile is considered for analysis of wind turbine blade. Geometry of this aerofoil is created using GAMBIT and CFD analysis is carried out using ANSYS FLUENT. Lift and Drag forces along with the angle of attack are the important parameters in a wind turbine system. These parameters decide the efficiency of the wind turbine. The lift force and drag force acting on aerofoil were determined with various angles of attacks ranging from 0° to 12° and wind speeds. The coefficient of lift and drag values are calculated for 1×105 Reynolds number. The pressure distributions as well as coefficient of lift to coefficient of drag ratio of this aerofoil were visualized. The CFD simulation results show close agreement with those of the experiments, thus suggesting a reliable alternative to experimental method in determining drag and lift.


Author(s):  
Mishal Thapa ◽  
Samy Missoum

Abstract In this paper, the stochastic optimization of a horizontal-axis composite wind turbine blade is performed. Wind energy has become widely popular in recent decades as an alternative source of energy and many studies have been devoted to finding an optimal wind turbine blade using deterministic optimization. However, the actual responses of the wind turbine blade such as power generation are affected by the stochastic nature of wind, uncertainties in material properties and modeling parameters, and so on. This can have an undesirable impact on the performance and reliability of blades, which demands the consideration of uncertainties during optimization. To this end, a surrogate-based stochastic optimization of a wind turbine blade considering the influence of randomness in wind speed on power generation was studied. A slight gain in average power over the baseline blade was obtained and it demonstrated the promise of the presented framework for the design of wind turbine blades.


Author(s):  
R. S. Amano ◽  
Ryan J. Malloy

This paper presents the comparison of the performance between two different designs of wind turbine blades; one is a straight and the other with a backward swept blade. The straight edge blade was constructed so that it is optimal on coming wind and rotation speeds with 7m/s and 20rpm. The blade has a length of 20m and uses a constant airfoil cross section NACA 4412. The swept edge blade has the same characteristics as the straight edge except for the trajectory of the edge. Each cross section has the same dimensions and has at the same distance from the hub as its corresponding section in the straight edge blade. To test this new design the performance of both blades were measured using CFD at a wind speeds ranging 0 to 20m/s. Comparisons were made for power generation and acoustic noise for both designs of the blades.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sutrisno . ◽  
Prajitno . ◽  
Purnomo . ◽  
B.W. Setyawan

<p>The researches on the design of 3-D wind turbine blades have been received less attention so far even though 3-D blade products are widely sold. In the opposite, advanced researches in 3-D helicopter blade have been studied rigorously. Researches in wind turbine blade modeling are mostly assumed that blade span wise sections behaves as independent two dimensional (2-D) airfoils, implying that there is no exchange of momentum in the span wise direction. Further more flow visualization experiments are infrequently conducted.</p><p>The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of 3-D wind turbine blade models with backward-forward swept and verify the flow patterns using flow visualization. In this research, the blade models are constructed based on the twist and chord distributions following Schmitz’s formula. Forward and backward swept are added to the wind turbine blades. It is hoped that the additional swept would enhance or diminish outward flow disturbance or stall development propagation on the span wise blade surfaces to give better blade design.</p><p>The performance of the 3-D wind turbine system models are measured by a torque meter, employing Prony’s braking system, and the 3-D flow patterns around the rotating blade models are investigated applying “tuft-visualization technique”, to study the appearance of laminar, separated and boundary layer flow patterns surrounding the 3-dimentional blade system.</p>For low speed wind turbines, Dumitrescu and Cardos (2011) have identified that stall spreads from the root of the rotating blade. In this study, it is found that for blades with (i) forward swept tip and backward swept root, the initial stall at the blade bottom would be amplified by concurrent strengthening flow due to  the backward swept root to create strong stall spreading outward, and therefore the blades gives lower performance. For blades with (ii) backward swept tip and forward swept root, the initial stall at the blade bottom would be weakened by opposite weakening flow due to the forward swept root, generate weak stall that tend to deteriorate. These blades have better performance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sutrisno Sutrisno ◽  
Deendarlianto Deendarlianto ◽  
Indarto Indarto ◽  
Sigit Iswahyudi ◽  
Muhammad Agung Bramantya ◽  
...  

The research on three dimensional (3-D) wind turbine blades has been introduced (Sutrisno, Prajitno, Purnomo, & B.W. Setyawan, 2016). In the current experiment, the 3-D wind turbine blades would be fitted with helicopter-like blade tips and additional fins to the blade hubs to demonstrate some laminarizing features. It was found that additional helicopter-like blade tip to the turbine blade creates strong laminar flows over the surface of the blade tips. Supplementary, finned hub, fitted to the blade body, creates rolled-up vortex flows, weakens the blade stall growth development, especially for blades at high-speed wind. A proposed mathematical form of modified lifting line model has been developed to pursue further 3-d blade development study of 3-d wind turbine blade. Rolled up vortex effects, developed by finned of the base hub, has been acknowledged could demolish the turbulent region, as well as laminarize the stall domain to intensify the induced wind turbine blade lift.


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1452
Author(s):  
Liwei Deng ◽  
Yangang Guo ◽  
Borong Chai

Wind power generation is a widely used power generation technology. Among these, the wind turbine blade is an important part of a wind turbine. If the wind turbine blade is damaged, it will cause serious consequences. The traditional methods of defect detection for wind turbine blades are mainly manual detection and acoustic nondestructive detection, which are unsafe and time-consuming, and have low accuracy. In order to detect the defects on wind turbine blades more safely, conveniently, and accurately, this paper studied a defect detection method for wind turbine blades based on digital image processing. Because the log-Gabor filter used needed to extract features through multiple filter templates, the number of output images was large. Firstly, this paper used the Lévy flight strategy to improve the PSO algorithm to create the LPSO algorithm. The improved LPSO algorithm could successfully solve the PSO algorithm’s problem of falling into the local optimal solution. Then, the LPSO algorithm and log-Gabor filter were used to generate an adaptive filter, which could directly output the optimal results in multiple feature extraction images. Finally, a classifier based on HOG + SVM was used to identify and classify the defect types. The method extracted and identified the scratch-type, crack-type, sand-hole-type, and spot-type defects, and the recognition rate was more than 92%.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessio Castorrini ◽  
Paolo Venturini ◽  
Fabrizio Gerboni ◽  
Alessandro Corsini ◽  
Franco Rispoli

Abstract Rain erosion of wind turbine blades represents an interesting topic of study due to its non-negligible impact on annual energy production of the wind farms installed in rainy sites. A considerable amount of recent research works has been oriented to this subject, proposing rain erosion modelling, performance losses prediction, structural issues studies, etc. This work aims to present a new method to predict the damage on a wind turbine blade. The method is applied here to study the effect of different rain conditions and blade coating materials, on the damage produced by the rain over a representative section of a reference 5MW turbine blade operating in normal turbulence wind conditions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 284-287 ◽  
pp. 518-522
Author(s):  
Hua Wei Chi ◽  
Pey Shey Wu ◽  
Kami Ru Chen ◽  
Yue Hua Jhuo ◽  
Hung Yun Wu

A wind-power generation system uses wind turbine blades to convert the kinetic energy of wind to drive a generator which in turn yields electricity, the aerodynamic performance of the wind turbine blades has decisive effect on the cost benefit of the whole system. The aerodynamic analysis and the optimization of design parameters for the wind turbine blades are key techniques in the early stage of the development of a wind-power generation system. It influences the size selection of connecting mechanisms and the specification of parts in the design steps that follows. A computational procedure and method for aerodynamics optimization was established in this study for three-dimensional blades and the rotor design of a wind turbine. The procedure was applied to improving a previously studied 25kW wind turbine rotor design. Results show that the aerodynamic performance of the new three-dimensional blades has remarkable improvement after optimization.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1014 ◽  
pp. 124-127
Author(s):  
Zhi Qiang Xu ◽  
Jian Huang

Wind turbines consists of three key parts, namely, wind wheels (including blades, hub, etc.), cabin (including gearboxes, motors, controls, etc.) and the tower and Foundation. Wind turbine wheel is the most important part ,which is made up of blades and hubs. Blade has a good aerodynamic shape, which will produce aerodynamic in the airflow rotation, converting wind energy into mechanical energy, and then, driving the generator into electrical energy by gearbox pace. Wind turbine operates in the natural environment, their load wind turbine blades are more complex. Therefore load calculations and strength analysis for wind turbine design is very important. Wind turbine blades are core components of wind turbines, so understanding of their loads and dynamics by which the load on the wind turbine blade design is of great significance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Bin Qu ◽  
Zhou Sun ◽  
Fang Feng ◽  
Yan Li ◽  
Guoqiang Tong ◽  
...  

This paper describes the method of preparing strong hydrophobic polypyrrole (PPy) on wind turbine blades. The water contact angle of strong hydrophobic PPy coatings was 127.2°. The strong hydrophobic PPy coatings exhibited excellent anti-icing properties. The maximum icing weight of strong hydrophobic PPy coating blade was almost 0.10 g while the maximum icing weight of no coating blade was found to be 26.13 g. The maximum icing thickness of a strong hydrophobic PPy coating blade was only 1.08 mm. The current research will provide a better technique to create anti-icing coatings on wind turbine blades and other outdoor equipment.


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