Modeling and Simulation of a 3 MW Wind Turbine Blade for Determination and Analysis of Flow Characteristics.

The paper discusses the strategy for aerodynamic prediction and analysis of a 56 m blade using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools. The aim of this study is to simulate the flowfield around a 3 MW wind turbine blade to study the flow physics dominated by the three-dimensional effects. This blade incorporates flatback airfoils on the inboard region of the blade used to improve aerodynamic performance in the root region. In order to reduce computation time and complexity, only one-third of the domain is modeled and a periodic boundary condition is imposed on the 120° periodic faces. A k-ω SST turbulence model is used as a solver for this simulation. Several features pertaining to 3D flowfield behavior are captured and studied. A comparison is made of the results obtained from RANS with those obtained from Boundary Element Method (BEM)-based methods. The flow past the flatback regions of the blade did not separate at the sharp edges of the flatback corners, as predicted by 2D simulation due to the presence of a dominant radial flow component in the span-wise direction which caused the flow to wrap around the trailing edge of the blade without corner separation. The paper presents a comparison of the inflow angles from CFD to those predicted by BEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]