Abstract
In this study, blades manufactured by 3D printing technology were experimentally tested to be used for a scaled wind turbine in a wind tunnel. The scaled model was originally designed and manufactured by researchers at the Technical University of Munich. The model has been slightly modified to adopt the 3D printed blades for this study. Also, control algorithms for the power maximization in the low wind speed regions were constructed and applied to a commercial programmable logic controller for wind tunnel tests of the scaled model. For comparison, the scaled model was also modeled in MATLAB/Simulink and dynamic simulations were performed with the measured wind speed as an input. The simulation results seemed to overpredict the experimental results initially, but by considering the unexpected extra generator torque due to friction of the shaft, the errors were reduced to be less than 5%. Based on this study, the application of 3D printed blades to the wind turbine scaled models of a similar rotor diameter was found to be an efficient and effective way of blade manufacturing and scaled model testing.
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