Aerodynamics of Wind Turbines

Hiroshi Imamura

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, Yokohama National University,

79-5 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501, Japan

1. INTRODUCTION so on are now actively studied.

Efficient use of wind turbine as the electric In this article the basic issues and some current
power generator has been developed by application topics on aerodynamics of horizontal axis wind tur-
of aerodynamics for rotor blade. “Airfoil” has made bines (HAWT) which are of majority of current op-
rotor possible to rotate in high speed and load. Early erating turbines are surveyed.
aerodynamics of wind turbine has based on theory of
airplane and helicopter rotor. However, aerodynam- 2. AIRFOIL
ics of wind turbine has been required different idea For HAWT blades the aviation airfoils such as
from helicopter rotor. For example, the accuracy of NACA series have been widely used. But these air-
rotor performance analysis depends mainly on the foils have been recognized to be insufficient for re-
treatment of “wake effect”, because the wake of pro- quirements such as reduction of rapid stall charac-
peller type wind turbine is induced a large velocity in teristics, insensitivity to wide Reynolds number in
rotor plane. Progress of aerodynamics of wind turbi- the range of between 500,000 and 2 million, insensi-
ne has ensured the new concept design turbines such tivity to leading edge roughness and structural effi-
as a stall controlled machine. ciency for root region where is designed using a
As the use of large scale commercial wind tur- thick airfoil.
bines is expanded over the world, the wind turbine New airfoil families for HAWT are designing in
industry is facing many difficulties in consulting Delft University of Technology [4], National Re-
efficient wind turbine machines, which is caused by newable Energy Laboratory (NREL) [5] and Riso
the inability to adequately predict structural loading National Laboratory [6], et al.. Figure 1 shows an
and power output. As the wind turbines are operating example of airfoils for HAWT blades [6].
in the natural environment, turbines are always sub-
jected to unsteady nature. However, recognizing on 3. ROTOR PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
aerodynamics of wind turbine associated with three- Rotor performance analysis of HAWT has been
dimensional, unsteady and separated complex flow is performed using several methods as shown in table 1.
not sufficient. The unsteady aerodynamics of wind In these methods a Blade Element Momentum
turbines is one of the most incentive issues in wind (BEM) method is mainly employed as a tool of per-
energy research and development [1,2,3]. The sub- formance analysis for HAWT because of their sim-
jects on aerodynamics of wind turbines such as des- plicity and readily implementation. Vortex wake
ign of new airfoil [4,5,6], three-dimensional effect of methods can adequately treat the effect of wake vor-
rotating blade [7,8], dynamic inflow effect [9,10]
dynamic stall associated with yawed inflow [11] and Table 1: Analysis methods of HAWT performance
Method Model Researcher
Actuator disk Betz [12]
Momentum
Blade element Wilson [13]
Lifting line Afjeh [14]
Vortex wake
Lifting surface Simoes [15]
Local circulation Elliptic blade Azuma [16]
Acceleration poten- Pressure per-
van Bussel [17]
tial turbation
Figure 1: Profiles of Riso A1- series airfoil [6] CFD RANS Duque [18]
tices and have some advantages over BEM, but need
computation burden. As computer power increases,
use of vortex wake methods is increased, and CFD
codes are also applied in the resent aspect.
This section follows the features of each method
on performance analysis of HAWT.
3.1 Blade Element Momentum Method
Most wind turbine design codes are based on
Blade Element Momentum (BEM) method [13]. The
basic of BEM method assumes the blade can be Figure 2: Wake visualization of 10m HAWT by NREL
analyzed as a number of independent element in (quotation by courtesy of NREL)
spanwise direction. The induced velocity at each
element is determined by performing the momentum
balance for an annular control volume containing the
blade element. The aerodynamic forces on the ele-
ment are calculated using the lift and drag coefficient
from the empirical two-dimensional wind tunnel test
data at the geometric angle of attack (AOA) of the
blade element relative to the local flow velocity.
BEM methods have aspects by reasonable tool
for designer, but are not suitable for accurate estima-
tion of the effect of wake, the complex flow such as Figure 3: Tip vortex and pressure contours of a rotor flow
using EllipSys2D/3D code by Risoe national laboratory
three-dimensional flow or dynamic stall because of
(quotation by courtesy of Risoe laboratory)
their assumptions.
3.2 Vortex Wake Method
The induced velocity in the rotor plane of treatment of the wake effect such as yawed inflow or
HAWT is largely increased in a heavy loading con- dynamic inflow, but they was not common tool for
dition and the wake vortices of HAWT develop to design of turbines because of their computation bur-
the downstream constructing highly skewed vortex den. However, their use are increasing with increase
sheet (see fig.2) in a largely decelerated axial flow of computer power.
near the rotor plane. Thus, the determination of the An other method to the vortex wake methods is
velocity induced by wake and wake geometry is one use of an asymptotic acceleration potential [17]. Ac-
of the most important aspects in the rotor perfor- celeration potential method is basis on the Lapace
mance analysis. equation of pressure perturbation. The rotor blades
Vortex wake method directly calculates the in- are represented in the model as discrete surfaces on
duced velocity from the bound vortices of blades and which a pressure discontinuity is present. The model
the trailing vortex in wake which are represented by implies the presence of spanwise and chordwise
lifting line [14] or lifting surface model [15]. pressure distributions, which are composed of ana-
The treatment of wake geometry can be classi- lytical asymptotic solutions for Laplace equation.
fied roughly into two types, as a prescribed wake The asymptotic acceleration method gives a
model [14] and a free wake model [15]. In the possibility to simplify or elaborate the model in
former model the wake represented by a line vortex specific areas of interests. In its simplest form the
or spiral vortices with fixed pitch. In the latter one, a model is equivalent to the lifting line model with
fractional step scheme is adopted and the configura- delinearized wake. More elaborated models makes it
tions of the wake are calculated at every time step possible to calculate the dynamic loads caused by
using a local velocity including the components in- dynamic inflow [10] and yawed inflow [11] situa-
duced by wake and bound vortices. The free wake tions.
model is generally tackled with vortex lattice method 3.3 CFD
which can fit on arbitrary blade shape with camber, Recent development of the computational fluid
taper and twist. Vortex wake methods are of accurate dynamics (CFD) allows us to simulate overall flow
around HAWT including tower and nacelle. In 1999
Duque et al. [18] calculated aerodynamics of a
HAWT using the RANS model and overset grids to
facilitate the simulation of flows about complex con-
figurations. Recently, some CFD codes actively are
developed. Figure 3 shows an example of CFD ana-
lysis of a rotor flow by three-dimensional Navier-
Stokes code.
Though the state of the art CFD is needed con-
siderable computer power and validations for
Navier-Stokes model, CFD has potential advantage
for the detailed understanding of aerodynamics of Figure 4: Upper surface pressure distribution vs azimuth
HAWT. angle; yaw angle of 30 degree and 30% span position [2]

4. UNSTEADY ROTOR AERODYNAMICS

Wind turbines in the open air field are always
exposed to the operating conditions in a very insta-
tionary environment. The aerodynamic loads on
blades and structures consequently are of an insta-
tionary nature. Therefore, the clarifications of the
dynamic effects on the load and dynamic behavior of
wind turbines in such conditions are quite important
for the design of the wind turbine.
4.1 Yawed Inflow
When incoming flow into the rotor is yawed to
the rotor plane, due to the rapid and periodical
change of the local AOA to the rotor blade, the dy-
namic load to the rotor is excited by the dynamic
stall effect.
Figure 5: Normal force coefficient vs angle of attack at
Figure 4 shows the experimental result accord-
30% and 63% span positions; yaw angle of 30 degree.
ing to the azimuthal change on the upper surface Dashed line is 2D static wind tunnel test data [2].
pressure distribution at 30% span position in a
yawed flow and low tip speed ratio condition for steady rotor aerodynamics, such as coherent wind
down-wind type HAWT [2]. The blade passes behind gusts, collective blade pitch and rotor speed varia-
the tower at 180 degree of azimuth angle. Because tions.
the dynamic stall vortex is induced by rapid change Dynamic inflow accounts for the influence of
of local AOA, the large and transient leading edge time varying trailing wake vortices on the inflow
suction pressure peaks were formed. This causes the velocity in the rotor plane. The vorticity is formed at
significant lift enhancement and the periodical load the blade and convected downstream with local total
to the blades. Figure 5 shows the normal force coef- velocity, partly wake induced. Equally, the strength
ficient for yaw angle of 30 degree at 30% and 63% of trailing and shed vortices depends on the wake
span. The hysteresis loop shows significantly differ- through its effect on the angles of attack. Dynamic
ent between inboard and outboard locations. inflow phenomena depend mainly on the trailing
In natural environment, when inflow turbulence vortices, the shed near wake being accounted for
is added, effecting both inflow magnitude and direc- through unsteady profile aerodynamics. The charac-
tion, the flow becomes more three-dimensional and teristic time scale for this phenomenon is rotor di-
the dynamic stall effect becomes much more com- ameter / inflow velocity. For large turbines, this will
plex [3]. be of the order of 5 to 10s. Phenomena having a time
4.2 Dynamic Inflow scale large compared to this may be regarded as
Dynamic inflow concerns with large scale un- quasi-steady.

Figure 6: Spanwise load distribution for stepwise variation
in wind speed [9]
Figure 7: Measured and calculated flapping moment at
inboard position for step on the pitch angle [10].
Figure 6 shows an example of spanwise load
distribution when the wind speed is varied in step-
wise [9]. Figure 7 shows comparison of the meas-
ured and calculated flapping moment at inboard
blade position for step on the pitch angle [10]. Free
and prescribed vortex wake model and acceleration
potential method were employed for simulation. The
measurements appear to be in a good qualitative and
quantitative agreement with the calculated results.
5. CONCLUSIONS
This article presented the basic issues on
aerodynamics of HAWT. Recognition of three di-
mensional, unsteady separated flow field around the
HAWT is indispensable to develop aerodynamics of
wind turbines. Cooperative research projects on the-
se subjects are now actively conducting by institutes
in EU and USA.
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