An Aerodynamic Method for the Preliminary Design of Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines

Abstract

The present paper describes a method developed to assist in the preliminary aerodynamic design of wind turbines by identifying regions of the rotor disk which are dominated by unsteady and/or three-dimensional effects. The technique is based on a blade element/momentum predictor that has been extended to consider yawed flow and tower shadow effects. In addition, the method tracks temporal changes in blade incidence to identify regions of the rotor disk which are susceptible to dynamic stall. It also monitors and assesses the severity of three-dimensional stall delay and the extent to which this interacts with the regions of unsteadiness. In the paper the capability of the method will be demonstrated by application to the specific test case of the U. S. National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) Combined Experiment turbine.