Aerodynamic Analysis of Wind Turbine Rotor Blade Airfoils by CFD Simulation

Mechanical Engineering

ABSTRACT One of the major challenges in the new century is the efficient use of energy resource as well as production of energy from the renewable energy resources. Although, scientist from around the world have shown that global warming has been caused in part by the greenhouse effect which is largely due to the use of fossil fuel for production of electricity and transportation facility. There are several alternative forms of energy that have already been developed such as wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and hydroelectric power. The advancement in renewable energy technologies has been possible and the vast amount of research performed by engineer in order to make them more affordable, more efficient, most importantly and inexpensive. Wind energy is one of the most important sources of renewable energy. Wind turbine extract energy from the kinetic energy of the wind. At present many researches are concentrated on aerodynamic design of wind turbine rotor blade through wind tunnel test and blade element momentum. These conventional methods are difficult and time consuming. However, wind turbine blade simulation through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) offers less time consuming, easy and inexpensive way to aerodynamic blade design. In this study two dimensional airfoils (NACA 4424 and NREL S809) CFD models are present using ANSYS-FLUENT software. Using the Spalart-Allmaras viscosity the dimensionless lift and drag coefficient and forces are calculated using different angle of attack and different mach numbers. Viscosity is based on Sutherland model. One of airfoil is selected from the different two airfoils, which is responsible for maximum power and efficiency. Wind data is taken from the review paper based on wind speed of Bhopal bairagarh site.

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