Proceedings of the Conference on Wind Energy Science and Technology

RUZGEM 2013
October 3-4, 2013, Ankara, TURKEY

RUZGEM2013 - 11

Aerodynamic Design of Turbine Blades Using Full Dynamic

Analysis of a Wind Turbine
Alican Özkan1
Middle East Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus
Güzelyurt, TRNC

Abstract
In this project a code dynamic stall control mechanism is successfully developed for 2MW wind
turbine. The dynamic loads for MW scale horizontal axis wind turbines are calculated and analysed.
Developed model was based on BEM (Blade Element Momentum) theory and this model is employed 10
different cross-sections of S809 Airfoil. The developed code is tested on linearly increasing wind speed and
changing wind speeds with respect to sinusoidal wave. The research results show that presented dynamic
stall model is consistent with industrial wind turbine power production. The presented study approach
of aerodynamic loads and power production is well developed for future purposes and researches.
Future predictions for this project is to improve this model by combining boundary layer of each wind
turbine blade including the position of each blade. Improvement of position of blade will be taken into
account, tower height and length of blade will be considered for variation of boundary layer over wind
turbine blades.
Nomenclature
τ Tilt Angle of The Rotor
ν Cone Angle of the Rotor
β Pitch Angle
a Axial Induction Factor
a’ Tangential Induction Factor
α Angle of Attack
φ Inflow Angle
Cl Lift Coefficient
Cd Drag Coefficient
r Local Blade Element
R Blade Length
Ω Rotational Speed
Vi Induced Velocity
V∞ Wind Speed
U Resultant Flow Velocity
c Chord Length
Re Reynold’s Number
HWAT Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine
CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics
BEM Blade Element Momentum

1 Graduate Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering Bilkent University, 06800 Bilkent Ankara, TURKEY

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 Introduction
MW scale wind turbine blade loads vary significantly on the score of yaw and tilt misalignment, tower
shadow, atmospheric turbulence, wind shear, tower and blade vibration and blade tip losses during the
full turn. Variation of these blade loads has serious effect on power production. At low wind speeds
presence of these factors will not allow to overcome static friction between rotor and turbine blade. In
fact high wind speed damages system equipment due to fatigue life and temperature increase due to
Coulomb friction. In order to restrain these problems different control mechanisms are developed.

Figure 1: Power Production of Different MW Scale Wind Turbines

Figure 1 states this variance between scale and power production of pitch control mechanism. In
order to increase life of wind turbine, optimum wind speed is taken as 12 m/s that is also called as rated
velocity. For higher wind velocities control mechanism cuts in and slows down rotor speed primarily by
changing angle of attack therefore drag and lift coefficients secondarily using brake system. Generally cut
out velocity is restricted with 25 m/s. After this wind velocity system stops and locks itself. Otherwise
explosion of generator or damage in the equipment may occur. In order to optimize this mechanism
lift and drag forces are required to be calculated. For lower wind speeds, power production should be
maximized and high wind speeds it should bee kept under control by reducing angle of attack, therefore
increasing drag force. At this point our purpose is to develop a control mechanism such that calculates
power production, aerodynamic loads and produced torque and keeps power production under control for
high wind speeds. The code will be developed for 30m long wind turbine blade and 2 MW wind turbine.
Related to this project, previously works consist of Pitch Control ,Aerodynamic Analysis and Mechan-
ical Design parts. Nowadays research on pitch control systems with direct or indirect control methods
are adaptable to different wind speeds with optimizing pitch angles of all rotor blades.[1, 2]. However
there are different approaches like using PIV controller to stabilize power production in high turbulence
conditions [3, 4]. In fact these approaches has nothing to do with the fatigue loads and their reductions.
In addition to that calculation of blade loads is essential due to necessity of accuracy.
For blade aerodynamic loads, there are two main approaches to obtain. First one is CFD approach which
gives accurate results considering different flow conditions.[5, 6] Still, computational expense, inconvenient
real time engineering analyses and reducing in aerodynamic load factors makes throw out of focus of this
method. Blade Element Momentum theory which is a quite common and practical method compared to
CFD in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. In fact one of the most important envolvement is investiga-
tion of different wind turbine blade profiles using FV method which analyses whole S-series wind turbine
airfoil profiles[7]. According to results of this work the must suitable airfoil profile is S809(Figure 2) and
S818 airfoil profiles.
Apart from that for inviscid and turbulent conditions optimum pitch angle is derived as 12◦ [8]. Opti-
mization of rotor blade is important since previous studies indicates for a proper design and optimization,
power production of a wind turbine can be increased up to 38% for low Mach number flow[9]. BEM the-
ory, which is based on Glauert propeller theory, is one of the most popular method to analyses wind
turbines which divides turbine blade in different cross-sections. For years and years this mathematical

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 Figure 2: S809 Airfoil Profile

method is improved by different modifications[10]. Previous developments and modifications indicates for
different wind speeds developed BEM theories are compatible with experimental results[11]. To increase
accuracy of aerodynamic load calculations of BEM theory, Dynamic Stall is considered. For dynamics
stall analysis various semi-emprical DS model are present such as Boeing Verto, ONERTA, Oye and B-L
models[12]. Almost in every BEM theory derivations and load factors are related to a factor a that is
axial induction factor. There are various equalities to define axial induction factor for different range
of values. For instance Figure 3 shows a sample flow chart to calculate axial induction and tangential
induction factor.

Figure 3: Sample Axial and Tangential Induction Factor Calculation Algorithm

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 This flow chart includes axial induction factor that is the ratio between induction speed and wind
speed. At this point Betz Limit, which is a limitation for power production states maximum efficiency of
the system can be maximum 59%. According to that limitation axial induction factor is maximum 1/3.
There are various experimental and numerical correlations related to derivation of induction factor but
in our case we will take it as a simple value such as 30 percent of incoming wind velocity.
Since we are interested in air flow and forces acting on blades, air density takes an important role at
this point. Weibull distribution defines a probability distribution for air density with respect to weather
conditions and humidity ratio of the ambient[13]. In our study we will take an average density for air
flow to simplify the study.
In this project our purpose is to design and develop an algorithm to of a control mechanism adaptable
to random wind speeds with different angle of attacks based on BEM theory and dynamic stall model
on S809 airfoil. Moreover the code will decrease angle of attack after a critical wind speed therefore
the equipment will not be damaged. After then using this dynamic model, lift and drag forces will be
estimated and power production based on different wind speeds will be calculated. Developed code will
be tested on certain increasing wind speed data and changing wind speed data with respect to sinusoidal
wave.

Methodology
In order to transmit power and produce renewable energy Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines(HAWT)
are composed of 4 main parts that are blades, rotor, gearbox and generator. Working principle of a wind
turbine is based on transmitting rotation of blades and gearbox to electric generator in order to produce
energy. Simplified schematic of a wind turbine is given in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Basic Parts of Wind Turbine

Generally for any wind speed power production is tried to kept at a constant value to increase life
of generator and prevent overloading. Since our purpose is to keep power production at the same level
up to a certain wind speed(rated velocity) by aerodynamic loads, we will treat to the system as there is
no break system. As it is described previously in Figure 1, after 12 m/s wind speed, power production
is kept as constant. In order to develop a control mechanism to maintain power production constant
aerodynamic loads are required to be found. The algorithm of power production calculation strategy is
given in following figure:

Figure 5: Algorithm for Power Calculation

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 Procedure starts with finding Resultant Flow Velocity with the inputs flow velocity, rotational speed
and specific shape of S809 airfoil. The reason of using S809 airfoil is it has lowest drag coefficient for
optimum angle of attack for wind turbines, thus more power is produced at low wind speeds. Afterwards,
one by one Reynold’s Number for each blade element, lift and drag coefficients for specific angle of
attack and Reynold’s Number, forces, then torque of nacelle and power production will be calculated.
Green arrow indicates new rotational speed, wind speed input and repetition of this procedure. Lift
and Drag coefficients are acquired from XFoil airfoil data, which is a MIT database of airfoil lift and
drag coefficients for various angle of attack and Reynold’s Number. Developed code gets lift and drag
coefficient at specified angle of attack and Reynold’s Number.
In order to obtain required aerodynamic forces, mathematical representation of problem should be stated.
From simple Fluid Dynamics lift and drag coefficients, differential form of lift and drag coefficients are
represented in following equations:
1
dL = ρCl U 2 cdr (1)
2
1
dD = ρCd U 2 cdr (2)
2
To apply this differential form of equations, blade element is divided into 10 equally sized elements.
The only difference between these elements is chord length of each element. Therefore magnitude of
Reynold’s Number in each element will be different. For the chord length calculation, previous work’s
model will be used[2]:

Figure 6: Chord Length of Wind Turbine Blade

This cited work assumes blade length was 45 meters. In our case we will use 30 meters long wind
turbine blade. Due to that reason, same chord length is scaled and adapted to 30m long blade. However
another restriction to apply these equations is rotation of wind turbine blade. Therefore, U in our
equation is not directly wind speed. It is combined with rotational speed of blade and tip speed; called
as resultant wind speed. Schematic of these velocities and components are shown in following figure:

Figure 7: Velocity Components for a HAWT

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 From Figure 7, orange lines indicates velocity components and Vrel is resultant velocity that is used
in the calculation of forces. Therefore calculation of resultant wind speed is:
p
U = (Ωr)2 + (V∞ − Vi )2 (3)
Firstly rotational speed in this equation calculated by tip speed ratio correlation that is prescribed in
following equation:
ΩR
XT SR = (4)
V∞
For three bladed HAWT tip speed ratio is defined as 6. Therefore in developed code this rotational
speed will update itself at the end of every power calculation loop. Moreover vi defines prescribed
induction speed of wind turbine. According to Betz limit, there ratio between induction speed and flow
velocity can be maximum 1/3. But we will stick to 30 % efficiency in the calculation of net velocity.
Moreover α γ and φ stands for angle of attack, pitch angle and inflow angle respectively. In our case we
will assume this pitch angle is zero, therefore inflow angle will be equal to angle of attack.
After the calculation of lift and drag forces, required forces, power and produced torque calculation is
simple. Aerodynamic forces in x and z axis will be:

dFz = dLcosφ + dDsinφ (5)

dFx = dLsinφ − dDcosφ (6)
Contributions to shaft torque and power output of turbine are:

dT = Nb ydFx (7)
dPw = Nb ΩydFx (8)
where Nb is the number of blades in wind turbine. In addition to that, notice that there is no
wind shear, the aerodynamic environment is axisymmetric and the airloads are independent of the blade
position relative to the shaft, unless the turbine is yawed with respect to wind. Substituting the results
for dFx and dFz , power output and torque will be

dT = Nb (dLcosφ − dDcosφ)y (9)

dPw = Nb (dLcosφ − dDcosφ)yΩ (10)
From this point, developed code regenerates rotational speed at the end of this step. Then, new
wind data is given to the system and resultant velocity is recalculated. In theory at 12 m/s wind speed,
power production is reached to it’s maximum value. If at the next time step power production exceeds
2MW, developed algorithm automatically reduces angle of attack with 1 degree and checks weather power
production is lower or same compared to it’s maximum value. If it is not, repeats the same procedure
otherwise continues with same angle of attack.

Results
Up to this point, required set of equations are derived and Matlab code is developed for the calculating
of power production of wind turbine in required size. As it is mentioned in previous sections, wind turbine
blade will be divided to 10 equally sized sections. Only difference of these sections will be chord length of
blade element. Therefore it is going to effect Reynold’s Number, thus lift and drag coefficient. According
to X-Foil data, necessary lift and drag coefficients for different angle of attack in given in following plots:

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 5x104 Re 105 Re
1 0.15 2 0.1
Drag Coefficient

Drag Coefficient
0.5 0.1

Lift Coefficient

Lift Coefficient
0 0.05

0 0.05

−0.5 0
−10 −5 0 5 10 15 −2 0
−10 −5 0 5 10 15
Angle of Attack
Angle of Attack

Figure 8: 5x104 Reynold’s Number Drag and Figure 9: 105 Reynold’s Number Drag and Lift
Lift Coefficients Coefficients

2x105 Re
2 0.1 5x105 Re
2 0.1
Drag Coefficient

Lift Coefficient

Drag Coefficient

Lift Coefficient
0 0.05
0 0.05

−2 0 −2 0
−10 −5 0 5 10 15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15
Angle of Attack Angle of Attack

Figure 10: 2x105 Reynold’s Number Drag and Figure 11: 5x105 Reynold’s Number Drag and
Lift Coefficients Lift Coefficients

However only this coefficient will not represent something really important, mostly we will focus on
using 5x105 Reynold’s number lift and drag coefficient. Simply because up to 12 m/s wind speed we will
keep on using 10◦ angle of attack. However after this wind speed as a necessity we should keep power
production under control. Therefore high wind velocities cause a higher Reynold’s Number, generally
Figure 12 will be more likely to be used for high wind speeds. If power production versus controlled
power production is plotted, Figure 13 will be the result:

10x105 Re Power Production Curve

2 0.06
2.5

2
Drag Coefficient

1 0.04
Lift Coefficient

Power, MW

1.5

0 0.02 1

0.5

−1 0
−10 −5 0 5 10 15
Angle of Attack 0
0 5 10 15 20
Wind Velocity, m/s
Figure 12: 10x105 Reynold’s Number
Drag and Lift Coefficients Figure 13: Power Production Curve

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 In most of the commercial wind turbine website this power production curve is kept at a constant
value due to the reason that brakes have been used. In fact in our developed code, only factor that slows
down rotational speed is aerodynamic loads. Therefore, to maximize power production at the beginning
state, angle of attack is taken as 10◦ but at 20 m/s wind speed it decreases to 4◦ . For the same case,
produced torque and aerodynamic lift and drag forces are in Figure 14 and Figure 15:

6 Produced Torque Drag and Lift Forces x 10

5

x 10 5000 5
12

10

Drag Force, N
8

Lift Force, N
Torque, N.m

0 0 0
0 5 10 15 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Wind Velocity, m/s Wind Speed

Figure 14: Produced Torque Figure 15: Lift and Drag Forces

In those figures, as it is expected up to rated velocity torque production increases as a parabolic

function. Since we reduce angle of attack and after this point, there is a slight decrease in the increase
of produced torque. Although power production is kept under control, there are some wiggles due to the
irregularities in the power production curve. The reason of this irregularity is after a certain angle of
attack, there is a sharp decrease in drag coefficient for high Reynold’s Number flows. Effect of this shall
be seen in Figure 15, drag and lift forces. Effect in the angle of attack is sharp after rated velocity and
this sharp change continues at every decrease in angle of attack. However as we decrease angle of attack,
with the effect of wind speed lift increases but it stabilizes after one point due to low angle of attack.
Next test case will be power production against an arbitrary wind speed. For this situation we took a
sinusoidal function to represent wind speed.

V∞ = 4sin(πx/10) + 8; (11)

For 100 time step, same algorithm has been tested. For this wind speed data,maximum and minimum
wind speed limitations will be 12 and 4 m/s. However for this wind speed set of data, there will be no
requirement to change angle of attack. Therefore accuracy of the algorithm for non-critical wind speeds
will be proved.

Power Production for Arbitrary Wind Speeds

3 15
Power Production, MW

Wind Speed, m/s

2 10

1 5

0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time Step

Figure 16: Power Production for Various Wind Speeds

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 From Figure 16, as it is seen for changing wind speeds, algorithm can adapt itself to the change in
wind speed.
Overall developed based on Blade Element Momentum theory, MW scale horizontal axis wind turbine is
introduced and the calculation and analysis of aerodynamic loads are carried out. The blade consists of
cylindrical section, S809 wind turbine airfoil. The main parameters as follows: rated power: 2.3 MW,
blade length: 30m , cut in wind speed: 3 m/s, rated wind speed: 12 m/s. Figure 8 to 12 shows drag
and lift coefficients that we have used for power calculations. Most significant part of these drag and
lift coefficients are Figure 12 for very high Reynold’s Number flows due to the reason that for high flow
velocities we kept power production under control and for these high speed flows Figure 12 lift and drag
coefficients is used.
Figure 13 shows our power production curve for increasing wind speed. At 3 m/s wind speed, system
does not operate and after 12 m/s wind speed power production becomes steady in order not to damage
equipment of wind turbine. In Figure 14 torque production of same test-case shall be seen. Similar to
power production curve, after rated wind speed increase in torque started to decrease. Maximum acquired
torque is 11x106 N.m . Since we are dealing with 2 MW horizontal axis wind turbine, it is normal to have
such an high torque. In fact if the system would tested for higher wind speeds, this value would continue
to increase. Relatively Figure 15 shows lift and drag forces for the same case. Again reduction of drag
force at 12 m/s wind speed stands for change in angle of attack by dynamic stall mechanism. In fact for
lift force situation is different. Characteristic of lift force is similar to torque production; continues to
increase but less than previous wind speeds.
Finally power production is tested for arbitrary wind speeds based on sinusoidal wave. Results shall
be seen in Figure 16. According to results that we have, dynamic stall mechanism works without any
problem for various wind speeds. Power production curve adapts itself to change in wind speed.

Conclusion
In this project dynamic stall control mechanism is generated for 2 MW wind turbine on S809 airfoil
profile. An algorithm is developed to calculate torque and power production. The code divides blade to
10 equally spaced elements and calculates a specific Reynold’s Number, therefore specific lift and drag
coefficient. After all, all those quantities are added up. Developed code is tested with constant increasing
wind speed and various wind speed such as sinusoidal wave. According to results that we have acquired,
system automatically controls power production and stabilizes in order not to damage equipment after
rated wind speed by decreasing angle of attack.
For the future work this model will be improved to a boundary layer model therefore the developed model
will be more realistic. Length and position of blade will have more importance. All three blades will be
investigated separately, thus problem will be not simply multiplying power production with number of
elements. Furthermore, probability function for air density, Weibull distribution, will be employed for
the future model. Furthermore if this model will be improved, it is planned to submit this project to a
conference related to renewable energy or fluid dynamics.
Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge to Dr. Eray Uzgören and Dr. Mehmet Barış Özerdem for their contribu-
tions to this project.

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