ANALYSIS AND OPTIMIZATION OF HORIZONTAL AXIS WIND TURBINE BLADE PROFILE

Abstract

With new emerging technologies and innovations in energy sector future seems to be bright. But there’s still few years for implementation of those technologies in commercial market. In time there is need to optimize existing technologies and increase their efficiency. Present research is one step towards that goal. This paper analyses and determine the optimum angle of attack at specific wind velocity for horizontal axis wind turbine. Analysis is done by setting wind speed to 10m/s (as this is average wind speed in most open area where wind turbines are placed) and by changing the angle of attack (6, 7, 8, 9 degrees) variation in different properties such as the power output, pressure distribution is determined. Pressure distributions as well as coefficient of lift to coefficient of drag ratio of different the airfoils are visualized and compared. Finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools are used for analysis of wind turbine. The paper also discusses important parameters in design of wind turbine blade to maximize the efficiency. From the analysis and design optimization of wind turbine blade, it is found out that, at velocity of 10m/s, blade with angle of attack of 8 degree is optimum for harvesting power from wind. Thus, only optimizing blade angle of attack increases power, changing other parameters like material type,