Performance Enhancement of Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine Using Numerical Techniques

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.

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

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.

Aerodynamic Investigation of a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine with Split Winglet Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

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.

Extensive Validation of HAWT Unsteady Modelling Using BEM and CFD

The present work aims to present two different approaches to model the unsteady aerodynamics of horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs). A complete and extensive comparison has been established between the results obtained using a low-fidelity calculation tool, as the Blade Element Momentum (BEM), and a high-fidelity technique, as the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Regarding the first calculation strategy, an accurate revision in polar diagrams calculation and the implementation of yaw and dynamic stall routines have endowed the BEM code to predict the machine performance under unsteady flow conditions. In order to achieve an accurate validation, the proposed BEM solver has been tested on AOC 15/50 and NREL Phase VI wind turbines. Referring to CFD techniques, a three-dimensional unsteady model has been improved to study the aerodynamic behaviour of the machine in case of yawed incoming wind.