Jang-Oh MO and Young-Ho LEE*
The Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, vol. 26, no. 1, pp.81-92, 2012

Abstract : The objective of this investigation is to clearly understand the aerodynamic characteristics of a small-sized wind turbine of NREL Phase VI, operating with a stall-regulated method using CFD code. Based on this, it is possible to provide turbine designers with the aerodynamic design data to increase efficiency and improve performance in the design phase of future small-sized wind turbine blades. Moreover, a comparison was made between experimental datasets, in order to verify the reliability and validity of the analysis results. The first height in the normal direction from the surface of a rotor blade is about 0.2 mm, and the average value of y+ is about 7 at 7 m/s. The domain is chosen to consist of only two hexahedral mesh regions, namely the interior region, including the wind turbine blade, and the external region excluding the rectangle. The total cell number of the numerical grid is about Ng = 3.0 × 106. Five different inflow velocities, in the range Vin = 7.0-25.1 m/s, are used for the rotor blade calculations. The calculated power coefficient is about 0.35 at a TSR of 5.41, corresponding to 7 m/s, and showed considerably good agreement with the experimental measurements, to within 0.08%. It was observed that the 3-D stall begins to generate near the blade root at a wind speed of 7 m/s. Therefore, root design approaches considering the appropriate selection of the angle of attack and the thickness are very important in order to generate the stall on the blade root. Through a clear understanding of aerodynamic characteristics of a small-sized NREL Phase VI wind turbine, it is expected that this useful aerodynamic data will be made available to designers as guidance in designing stall-regulated wind turbine blades in the development phase of small-sized wind turbine systems in the future.

Keyword : CFD; A small-sized wind turbine; Aerodynamic characteristics; Stall-regulated method; Blade element momentum theory; Power coefficient; Pressure coefficient; 3-D stall; Separated flow; Stall angle; Surface streamlines; Tip speed ratio