Abstract
Sustainability has become one of the most significant considerations in everyday work, including energy production. The fast-growing trend of wind energy around the world has increased the demand for efficient and optimized airfoils, which has paved the way for energy harvesting systems. The present manuscript proposes an aerodynamically optimized design of the well-known existing NREL S809 airfoil for performance enhancement of the blade design for wind turbines. An integrated code, based on a genetic algorithm, is developed to optimize the asymmetric NREL S809 airfoil by class shape transformation (CST) and the parametric section (PARSEC) parameterization method, analyzing its aerodynamic properties and maximizing the lift of the airfoil. The in-house MATLAB code is further incorporated with XFOIL to calculate the coefficient of lift, coefficient of drag and lift-to-drag ratio at angles of attack of 0° and 6.2° by the panel technique and validated with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) experimental results provided by The Ohio State University (OSU). On the other hand, steady-state CFD analysis is performed on an optimized S809 airfoil using the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equation with the K–ω shear stress transport (SST) turbulent model and compared with the experimental data. The present method shows that the optimized airfoil by CST is predicted, with an increment of 11.8% and 9.6% for the lift coefficient and lift-to-drag ratio, respectively, and desirable stability parameters obtained for the design of the wind turbine blades. These characteristics significantly improve the overall aerodynamic performance of new optimized airfoils. Finally, the aerodynamically improved results are reported for the design of the NREL Phase II, Phase III and Phase VI HAWT blades.
Highlights
The optimization results of the S809 airfoil are further compared with the experimental data from The Ohio State
The main objective behind the aerodynamic shape optimization and CFD simulation of an airfoil was to maximize the coefficient of lift (Cl )
For the CFD simulation of the airfoil, ANSYS ICEM was used as meshing software, while ANSYS CFX was considered for discretizing the governing equation and running the simulation
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The airfoil shape is represented by parametric methods with different basis functions because the parameters used in the airfoil are greater in number, making it possible to find better design results [19]. An optimization process for airfoil geometry is introduced This method is based on the genetic algorithm (GA) optimization method, finding the optimum results by the coupling parameterization method and producing the maximum lift-to-drag (L/D) ratio. The in-house code has been written in the widely used MATLAB, which has many library functions for supportive execution Because of factors such as the simplicity of the CST method and the robustness of the code, it can be coupled to any other blade design program for the optimization of single or multiple airfoils along the span of the blade. The results are discussed and reported for the coefficient of drag (Cd ), coefficient of lift (Cl ) and lift-to-drag (L/D) ratio for optimized airfoil geometries at 0◦ , 2◦ , 4◦ , and 6.2◦ angles of attack (AOAs)
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