Applying Hollow Blades for Small Wind Turbines Operating at High Altitudes

Abstract

Since the air density reduces as the altitude increases, operation of Small Wind Turbines (SWTs) which usually have no pitch mechanism, remains as a challengeable task at high altitudes due largely to the reduction of starting aerodynamic torque. By reducing the blades moment of inertia through the use of hollow blades, the study aims to mitigate that issue and speed up the starting. A three-bladed, 2 m diameter small horizontal axis wind turbine with hollow cross-section was designed for operating at two sites with altitude of 500 and 3,000 m. The design variables consist of distribution of the chord, twist and shell thickness along the blade. The blade-element momentum theory was employed to calculate the output power and starting time and, the beam theory was used for the structural analysis to investigate whether the hollow blades could withstand the aerodynamic and centrifugal forces. A combination of the starting time and the output power was included in an objective function and then, the genetic algorithm was used to find a blade for which the output power and the starting performance, the goals of the objective function, are high while the stress limitation, the objective function constraint, is also met. While the resultant stresses remain below the allowable stress, results show that the performance of the hollow blades is far better than the solid ones such that their starting time is shorter than the solid blades by approximately 70%. However, in the presence of the generator resistive torque, the algorithm could not find the blade for the altitude near to 3000 m. To solve that problem, the tip speed ratio of the turbine was added to other design variables and another optimization process was done which led to the optimal blades not only for the lower altitude but also for the higher one.