Design approach of thrust-matched rotor for basin model tests of floating straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbines

Abstract

Rotor redesign approaches have been widely proposed to solve the thrust mismatch issue caused by scaling effects for basin model tests of horizontal axis floating wind turbines (FWTs). However, limited basin model tests utilized the thrust-matched rotor (TMR) to accurately evaluate the aerodynamic loads applying to the vertical axis FWTs. This paper described the detailed design approach of the TMR of floating straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) with a rated power of 5.3 MW. First, the AG455 airfoil was selected to replace the NACA0018 airfoil. AG455 airfoil can show a larger lift coefficient and a smaller drag coefficient at low Reynolds number. On this basis, the load distribution match algorithm was used to assign the blade pitch angle and chord length at each section of the blade. This method takes the spanwise load and load change rate of model-scaled blade and full-scaled blade as the constraint conditions. By adopting this method, the rotor thrust can be tailored to match the prototype values across a wide range of tip speed ratios. This design approach proves advantageous in assessing the aerodynamic performance of VAWTs under varying inflow wind speeds and unsteady wind conditions. The redesigned TMR model under low Reynolds number can meet Froude similarity criterion, which is helpful to improve the accuracy of vertical axis FWT model tests in the wave basin.