Numerical investigations on the aerodynamic perfor

Authors: Hu Zhou Decheng Wan

Publish Date: 2015/01/27

Volume: 14, Issue: 1, Pages: 61-68

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Abstract

Although the upwind configuration is more popular in the field of wind energy the downwind one is a promising type for the offshore wind energy due to its special advantages Different configurations have different aerodynamic performance and it is important to predict the performance of both downwind and upwind configurations accurately for designing and developing more reliable wind turbines In this paper a numerical investigation on the aerodynamic performance of National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL phase VI wind turbine in downwind and upwind configurations is presented The open source toolbox OpenFOAM coupled with arbitrary mesh interface AMI method is applied to tackle rotating problems of wind turbines Two 3D numerical models of NREL phase VI wind turbine with downwind and upwind configurations under four typical working conditions of incoming wind velocities are set up for the study of different unsteady characteristics of the downwind and upwind configurations respectively Numerical results of wake vortex structure time histories of thrust pressure distribution on the blade and limiting streamlines which can be used to identify points of separation in a 3D flow are presented It can be concluded that thrust reduction due to bladetower interaction is small for upwind wind turbines but relatively large for downwind wind turbines and attention should be paid to the vibration at a certain frequency induced by the cyclic reduction for both configurations The results and conclusions are helpful to analyze the different aerodynamic performance of wind turbines between downwind and upwind configurations providing useful references for practical design of wind turbineFoundation item Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant Nos 51379125 51411130131 11432009 the National Key Basic Research Development Plan 973 Plan Project of China Grant No 2013CB036103 High Technology of Marine Research Project of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China ABSChina and the Program for Professor of Special Appointment Eastern Scholar at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning Grant No 2013022

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