Growing interests in renewable energy and prosumer electricity market indicate a demand for cost-efficient and highly-effective household solutions. Next to development of prototypical ideas, modern research also aims to maximize efficiency of well-known devices. Optimal design of a blade geometry is a key aspect in horizontal axis small wind turbine augmentation. The main difficulty to be considered is an airfoil operating in extremely low Reynolds number conditions. It was observed that transitional character of the flow causes deterioration of airfoil performance and eventually significantly decreases power coefficient of a small wind turbine. Presented study concerns boundary layer turbulation effects on aerodynamic characteristics of selected airfoil, with possible implementation for small wind turbine blade development. The geometry is analyzed using XFOIL codes to predict desired transition location. Obtained results are an input for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis performed in ANSYS Fluent, where different heights of boundary layer trip are simulated. Calculations are conducted for Reynolds numbers not exceeding 150 000 and include cases of pure geometry and airfoil modified with turbulator trip. Simulations based on Blade Element Momentum theory (BEM) indicate that application of blades equipped with boundary layer trips would increase rotor’s aerodynamic power coefficient and reduce possible instabilities in turbine operation.
Influence of induced boundary layer transition on airfoil performance – Numerical study for small wind turbine application
14TH INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE ON AERONAUTICS, AUTOMOTIVE, AND RAILWAY ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGIES ; 2022 ; Sozopol, Bulgaria
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 3064 , 1
2024-04-10
7 pages
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English