Bionic Design of Wind Turbine Blade Based on Long-Eared Owl's Airfoil.

Weijun Tian,Qian Cong,Jiyue Wang,Ming Li,Zhen Yang,Yi Ma,Qi Zhang

doi:10.1155/2017/8504638

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a bionic design for the airfoil of wind turbines inspired by the morphology of Long-eared Owl's wings. Glauert Model was adopted to design the standard blade and the bionic blade, respectively. Numerical analysis method was utilized to study the aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoils as well as the blades. Results show that the bionic airfoil inspired by the airfoil at the 50% aspect ratio of the Long-eared Owl's wing gives rise to a superior lift coefficient and stalling performance and thus can be beneficial to improving the performance of the wind turbine blade. Also, the efficiency of the bionic blade in wind turbine blades tests increases by 12% or above (up to 44%) compared to that of the standard blade. The reason lies in the bigger pressure difference between the upper and lower surface which can provide stronger lift.

Highlights

Wind power is a clean and renewable source of energy [1]
The bionic research finds that the airfoils inspired by birds, including the seagull airfoil and those based on the leading edge of Long-eared Owl wings, have better aerodynamic performance [10,11,12,13]
The scanned data were processed in IMAGEWARE 12, and the airfoil with superior aerodynamic performance was named as “bionic airfoil,” which is located at the point with a span-wise aspect ratio of 50% on the wings [11]

Summary

Introduction

Wind power is a clean and renewable source of energy [1]. The increasing use of wind power is of great significance for reducing environmental pollution, improving energy consumption, and realizing sustainable development. The specialized airfoil series greatly changed the operating conditions of wind turbines and increased the blade adaptability. This led to a startup at low wind speeds as well as a stall delay at high wind speeds. Most of these airfoils were developed using traditional inverse design approaches [6]. The bionic research finds that the airfoils inspired by birds, including the seagull airfoil and those based on the leading edge of Long-eared Owl wings, have better aerodynamic performance [10,11,12,13]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion