An examination of hub wind turbine utilizing fluid-structure interaction strategy

Abstract

A compromise approach between aerodynamic performance and structural robustness is presented. The modeling of horizontal axis wind turbine blade GE1.5-XLE is studied regarding the applicability of three different solution methods computational fluid dynamics (CFD), one – way (unidirectional), and two – way (bidirectional) coupling fluid – structure interaction (FSI) at a shedding frequency of the vortex far from the natural frequency. The predicted results showed significant differences between the unidirectional coupling solution and experimental data. While, the bidirectional coupling method proposed accurate FSI and gave results closer to the experimental measurements than unidirectional simulation results. The bidirectional coupled approach appears to be more stable and accurate, where a large number of time steps should be used for uncoupled method to achieve the same level of precision. For the present case involving large blade strain, the difference between the prediction of rigid blade solution using CFD and FSI model increases considerably. However, it is concluded that for large blade strains, the FSI model is closer shown to be more adequate for accurate representation of the turbine performance. Moreover, when optimization is a key aspect, bidirectional simulations should be performed regardless of the higher computational cost.