Numerical analysis of aerodynamic performance of offshore wind turbine

Abstract

The increasing size of wind turbine blades leads to various flow phenomena which are influenced by aerodynamic design of blade. Detailed information of flow separation and wake development are important for wind turbine blade designers to optimize blade design. In order to obtain detailed information on the flow field, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) modeling is the topic in many research studies. In this paper aerodynamic analysis of the reference DTU 10 MW HAWT rotor using finite volume method was done. Numerical simulations are realized in a commercial software package ANSYS FLUENT. Flow field is modeled by Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations using transition SST viscous model. The pressure-based SIMPLEC pressure-velocity coupling and 2nd order spatial discretization schemes were used for calculation. Obtained numerical results for mechanical power, power coefficient, thrust, thrust coefficient, pressure coefficient and relative velocity contours at rated wind speed were considered. The results were compared with the reference results and conclusions were derived.