Dynamics of a wind turbine airfoil in turbulent inflow
Abstract
An experimental investigation of the aerodynamics of a wind turbine airfoil model was performed for laminar inflow and three different turbulent inflow conditions at Re ~ 500,000. Particular turbulent inflow conditions were generated with an active grid, which allows for a repetition of the same turbulence pattern for each investigated airfoil configuration. The inflow wind fields comprise a laminar baseline case, a quasi-2D sinusoidal angle of attack (AoA) variation and an intermittent AoA variation. Additionally, AoA variations as obtained from a 5-hole Pitot probe during a field experiment were emulated. High-resolution time series of the pressure distributions and acting forces on a DU00-W-212 airfoil model were measured under the various inflow conditions for an AoA range of +/-35°. The obtained data was analyzed using time averages of first order quantities (mean, std. deviation) as well as more complex stochastic methods. The analysis of the laminar and turbulent cases indicates higher AoAs for maximum lift under turbulent conditions, while the drop-off in the post-stall regime is flattened.
The presented work was funded from the European Union's Seventh Program for research, technological development and demonstration under grand agreement No FP7-ENERGY-2013-1/n° 608396.- Publication:
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APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- November 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015APS..DFDD28009H