Design optimization of a wind turbine blade to reduce the fluctuating unsteady aerodynamic load in turbulent wind

• DOI: 10.1007/s12206-011-1106-4
• Publication Date: 2012-03-28T03:51:33Z
• Authors: Jihoon Jeong; Kyunghyun Park; Sangook Jun; Kisun Song; Dong-Ho Lee
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology; 7. Clean energy

Design optimization of the wind turbine of a NREL 1.5-MW HAWT blade was studied to minimize the fluctuation of the bending moment of the blade in turbulent wind. In order to analyze the unsteady aerodynamic load of a wind turbine, FAST code was used as the analysis code. To consider turbulent wind as the wind input model in FAST, TurbSim was used as a turbulent wind simulator. For effective geometrical representation of the aerodynamic shape of a wind turbine blade, the shape modeling function was used to represent the chord length and twist angle. The fluctuation of the out-of-plane bending moment at the blade root was minimized by maintaining the required power of the wind turbine. Through the redistribution of the section force in the radial direction between both the primary and tip regions, the magnitude of the fluctuation of the out-of-plane bending moment was reduced by about 20%, and the rated power of 1.5-MW was maintained. The local angles of attack for the optimized blade were near the point of the maximum lift-to-drag ratio in the primary and tip regions compared to the baseline blade. The fluctuating unsteady aerodynamic load in the optimized blade was reduced within the operating range of the wind speed. With the optimized blade shape, the wind turbine can be operated with decreased fluctuating aerodynamic loads and have a longer life in turbulent wind.