Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) Analysis of NACA Airfoil for Wind Turbine Blade Design

Abstract

The paper presents a conceptual study of performance enhancing devices of an airfoil using computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique. Two simple passive devices were selected and examined for increase in lift and decrease in drag. The target of the study was to evaluate and select the best airfoil suitable for wind turbine blade in a typical Nigeria Environment. The selected airfoils includes; NACA 0012, NACA 2412 and NACA 4412 while the selected angle of attack are; 0°, 4°, 8° and 12. The various airfoils geometry was created using Autodesk inventor and imported into ANSYS design modeler while meshing of the airfoil fluid geometry was done with the aid of ANSYS Meshing. To implement the ANSYS design modeller, the spalart-Allmaras turbulence model was selected and strain/vorticity based sub-option subsequently selected. The CAD Model was prepared in CATIA VS R19 while Pre-processing and simulation was done in ANSYS ICEM CFD 16.0 and ANSYS FLUENT 16.0 respectively. Result of the study shows that NACA 4412 at 4° angle of attack gave the maximum lift to drag ratio and hence, was considered for use in the design of wind turbine blade. The results justify the optimum position for enhancing airfoil performance at a specified angle of attack Keywords : Airfoil, Wind turbine blade, Angle of attack, Coefficient of lift, Coefficient of drag and CFD analysis DOI: 10.7176/IEL/12-2-03 Publication date: May 31 st 2022