Numerical Simulation to the Effect of Rotation on Blade Boundary Layer of Horizontal Axial Wind Turbine

Xiang Gao, Jun Hu

College of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China
abrahamgx@gmail.com

Abstract Two-dimensional blade element/momentum theory (BEMT) is often used in designing and calculating the performance of the blades of the wind turbine. However, in stalled conditions, the wind turbine rotor power output is under-predicted. This phenomenon, in which there are differences between the measured performances and predications based on 2D aerofoil characteristics in stalled condition, is so-called stall-delay. The reason for the stall delay has been the cause of much discussion, but a convincing physical process has not yet been established. What is agreed is that, for whatever reason, the adverse pressure gradient experienced by the flow passing over the downwind surface of the blade is reduced by the blades rotation. The adverse pressure gradient slows down the flow as it approaches the trailing edge of the blade after the velocity peak reaches close the leading edge. In the boundary layer viscosity also slows down the flow and the combination of the two effects, and if sufficiently large, can bring the boundary layer flow to a standstill (relative to the blade surface) or even cause a reversal of flow direction. When flow reversal takes place, the flow separates from the blade surface and stall occurs, giving rise to loss of lift and a dramatic increase in pressure drag. This paper is aimed at describing the effect of rotation on the blade boundary layer of a wind turbine by solving the 3D- and 2D-NS equations. An NREL Phase VI test turbine is used as the numerical model. The grid is generated in ANSYS ICEM 12.0. Both Hex and Tetra mesh are used to increase the accuracy with small-scale computations. Commercial code FLUENT and the MRF method were chosen to solve the fluid fields around 3D wind turbine blade and 2D airfoil. We found that, compared with 2D airfoil, the stall on 3D blade is postponed due to the rotation and the separation point is delayed with the increase of rotation speed or decrease of the blade spanwise position. Keywords stall delay; Computational Fluid Dynamics; rotation effect

wind turbine design. Because of the rotation of the turbine blades, there is a difference between the data of two-dimensional airfoil wind tunnel test and the rotational blade [1]. This difference, which is called the stall delay, has a significant impact on the prediction of wind turbine performance. The stall delay is essentially caused by the effect of rotation of the wind turbine blades. Himmelskamp first discovered this phenomenon, and then Viterna proposed that the stall delay affects the accuracy of wind turbine performance prediction model [2]. Some researchers established different boundary layer equations based on Navier-Stokes equations, combining with chordwise and spanwise momentum equations, to improve the accuracy [3]. By solving the 3D integral boundary layer equations, with assumed velocity profiles, the effects of the rotation on the blade boundary layers are investigated. The linear adverse velocity gradient assumption is used for simulating the velocity distribution on the surface of the HAWT blade in the boundary layer analysis. Although this assumption is approximate to the real operating condition in most cases, it is relatively simple. With the use of a computer, CFD is used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations. In this paper, 2D stationary condition and 3D rotating condition are calculated. II. NUMERICAL SIMULATION ANSYS ICEM and Fluent are employed to generate the grid and solve Navier-Stokes equations. A. 2D Condition The original wind turbine geometrical model is created using ANSYS ICEM. The S809 airfoil and Phase VI wind turbine, developed by NREL for exploring the aerodynamics performance of HAWT are chosen for 2D and 3D calculation [4]. For the 2D condition, CFD simulations use the C grid topology with approximately with 280 cells on the airfoil surfaces and the total cell number is 55200.

I. INTRODUCTION Although the use of wind energy has 3,000 years of history, the application of the modern wind turbine has been just a few years. Currently, blade element theory (BEMT) is widely used to conduct the horizontal axis
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Fig. 1 shows the calculation field and grid of the airfoil.

Fig. 2. NREL Phase VI Blade

Fig. 3 shows the calculation field of the 3D condition. The whole field is divided into two regions. One region is the area around the blade (see Fig. 4). In this region, the C-type structured mesh is chosen. The outside region is filled with unstructured tetrahedral mesh (see Fig. 5). The two regions are connected by interface.

Fig. 3. Calculation field for 3D blade

Fig. 1. Calculation field and grid for 2D condation

The mesh of boundary layer is generated around the airfoil. The normal grid spacing is stretched as a result the cell thickness at the surface gives y 1 . The

k SST turbulence model is used [5]. The

boundary conditions on the airfoil are derived from the no-slip condition and the far-field boundary conditions are set up from the undisturbed onset flow. B. 3D Condition For the 3D condition, the NREL Phase VI model, tested by NERL, is selected to carry out CFD simulations. As shown in Fig. 2, this two-bladed upwind rotor uses the NREL S809 airfoil with tapered chord for twisted blades. Due to the fact that the rotor is circular and symmetrical around its axial, the calculations only need to model the flow field of a single blade. The other blade will experience the periodic flow pattern from blade to blade. As a result, the computational domain covers a 180 portion of the rotor with out side wind tunnel.

Fig. 4. Structured C-type mesh

Fig. 5. Unstructured mesh

In this numerical calculation, moving reference frame (MRF) method and k SST model is chosen [6]. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS Shaft power obtained from different ways is shown in Fig. 6.. We can see that the shaft power obtained by different prediction methods is very consistent with the experimental result when the wind speed is under 7m/s. With the increase of the wind speed, the wake models underestimate the power generation. Only the 3D CFD calculations and test values are able to maintain a good consistency.

Fig. 6. shaft power of the rotor

A. Comparison between 2D stationary condition and 3D rotating condition The pressure coefficient is defined as:

0.95) under a wind speed of 7m/s. Compared to the 2D stationary condition, in the 3D rotating condition, the flow acceleration along the pressure gradient appears at the 42% of the chord on the pressure side. For the 2D condition, the flow separation point almost starts at the leading edge of the blade, and then the pressure slightly drops and finally gradually increases after 60% chord. For the 3D condition, the pressure distribution changes on the suction side are very significant: The adverse pressure gradient has been extended to 20% of the chord length, corresponding to the delay the separation point to 20% chord location; Pressure on the suction side of the rotating blade is lower than the value of the 2D flow, leading to a significant increase of the blade load. On the pressure side, the pressure distribution of 2D and 3D conditions are agreed at the tip of the blade. On the suction side, the separation point on the 2D stationary blade moves to the tail edge, with a decrease of the separation zone. In the 3D rotating condition, the pressure distribution along the chord length is smoother, with little separation. B. Results under different wind speed in 3D rotating condition

cp

p p 2 0.5C [v ( r ) 2 ]

(1)

Fig. 8. Limiting streamline on the suction side under different wind speed

Fig. 7. Pressure distrebution under 7m/s wind speed

Fig. 7 shows the pressure coefficient distribution at five spanwise locations (r/R=0.30, 0.47, 0.63, 0.80 and

In Fig. 8, according to the limiting streamline on the suction side, when the wind speed is 5m/s, the stall phenomenon appears only in the blade root region. As the wind speed increases, due to the centrifugal force and Coriolis force, the spanwise limiting streamline tends to the trailing edge; when the wind speed increases to 7m/s, the separation on the suction side expanded. When the wind speed is 10m/s, the suction side separation is very large, almost occupied the whole blade.

IV. CONCLUSIONS Numerical studies were carried out in a 2D stationary airfoil condition and a 3D rotating condition. The comparison indicates the stall delay of the rotor. By comparing the detailed flow fields of the two conditions, the effect of rotation on blade boundary layer is analyzed. Final results show that: The widely used BEM theory underestimates the performance of the rotating blades; In the 3D rotating condition, when the angle of attack of the blade of HAWTs is under stall angle, the rotating has little effect on lift force; While the angle of attack is in the range of stall, the lift force of the rotating blade will increase, which causes an increase in the wind turbine power. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The first author is grateful for the advice of Prof. Jun Hu at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and

Astronautics. This work was supported the by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Grant No. 2007CB210301). REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] H. Himmelskamp, Profile investigations on a rotating airscrew, MAP Volkenrode, Reports and Translation No. 832, 1947. L. A. Viterna, and R. D. Corrigan, Fixed-pitch rotor performance of large HAWTs, DOE/NASA Workshop on large HAWTs, Cleveland, OH. D. M. Hu, H. Ouyang, and Z. H. Du, A study on stall-delay for horizontal axis wind turbine, Renewable Energy, 2006. 31(6): pp. 821-836. N. N. Srensen, J. A. Michelsen, and S. Schreck, NavierStokes predictions of the NREL phase VI rotor in the NASA Ames 80 ft 120 ft wind tunnel, Wind Energy, 2002, 5(2-3): pp. 151-169. F. R. Menter, Two-equation eddy-viscosity turbulence models for engineering applications, AIAA-Journal, 32(8), 1994, pp. 1598 1605. Fluent Inc., Fluent Help file, 2006.

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