A New Flow Control and Efficiency Enhancement Method for Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines Based on Segmented Prepositive Elliptical Wings

Abstract

Flow separation occurs when wind turbines operate under large inflow conditions, which seriously affects the utilization of wind energy and reduces the output power of the blade. Therefore, a composite flow control configuration for horizontal axis wind turbines, founded on segmented prepositive elliptical wings, is proposed for efficiency enhancement. Taking a typical NREL Phase VI wind turbine as the prototype, its separation effect is evaluated by the CFD method. Then, starting from the improvement of the two-dimensional airfoil flow, the prepositive elliptic wing is designed according to the airfoil flow, and the optimal two-dimensional flow control configuration of the blade airfoil is obtained by simulation analysis. Finally, the two-dimensional configuration is extended to three-dimensional, and the aerodynamic characteristics of the blade before and after flow control are simulated and compared. The results show that, at wind speeds of 10~20 m/s, flow separation on the blade is effectively inhibited; meanwhile, the pressure difference between the pressure surface and the suction surface increases. These characteristics greatly improve the performance of wind turbine and increase its torque by more than 30%. Moreover, when the flow control effect cannot be reached, the blade torque is only reduced by approximately 2%.

Keywords

• horizontal axis wind turbine
• prepositive elliptic wing
• computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
• flow control