Aerodynamic shape integrated design of wind turbine airfoils and vortex generators

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current design method for wind turbine airfoils and vortex generators (VGs) is independent, which cannot be used to simultaneously design wind turbine airfoils and VGs with high aerodynamic performance. Therefore, an aerodynamic-shaped integrated design method for wind turbine airfoils and VGs is proposed. The aerodynamic-shaped VGs instead of plate VGs are introduced to be installed on wind turbine blade section. The blade airfoil and aerodynamic-shaped VGs are both expressed by B-spline function. Then, the optimal mathematic model of wind turbine airfoil with aerodynamic shaped VGs is established, for which the multi-objective functions are maximum lift to drag ratio plus maximum lift coefficient. DU97-W-300 and CLARKY-117 airfoils are selected as initial objects to be optimized simultaneously by combining CFD simulation and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The optimal results indicate that the maximum lift coefficient and lift to drag ratio of the optimized blade with novel VGs show the increase of 9.3% and 7.5%, respectively, compared to initial design. In addition, through the comparative analysis of streamlines and vorticity contours, the new blade section with novel VGs could produce larger induced vortex and could effectively restrain the fluid separation on the blade surface. This study provides a good reference to the design and application of wind turbine airfoils and VGs.