Design of a passive flow control solution for the mitigation of vortex induced vibrations on wind turbines blade sections as a response to extreme weather events

Abstract

The goal of the present work is to perform exploratory assessments on the suitability of microcylinder devices to mitigate wind turbine blade vortex induced vibration in small cross flow regimes, specially occurring under adverse weather events. For this purpose, the deep stall behavior of the NACA0021 has been evaluated for the first time on a wide range of high angles of attack (50°–130°) by means of CFD assessments, and the effects of microcylinders have been studied in terms of the reduction of aerodynamic coefficient magnitudes and fluctuations. In a first step, the passive flow control solution at 90° has been analyzed for a total number of investigated cases equal to 15, keeping constant the diameter of the microcylinders and varying the relative positions of these devices with respect to the blade. Mitigations of the load standard deviations between 63% and 97% across all the tested angles of attack have been found. Additionally, genetic programming (GP) was used to obtain a more general viewpoint of the effect of the microcylinders on the aerodynamics forces. Assessments of the flow fields confirm that properly located microcylinders disrupt the coherent vortical structures in the wake, responsible for periodic loading on the blade section.