Abstract
The effects of two types of flow control devices, vortex generators (VGs) and Gurney flaps (GFs), on the power output performance of a multi-megawatt horizontal axis wind turbine is presented. To that end, an improved blade element momentum (BEM)-based solver has been developed and BEM-based computations have been carried out on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5 MW baseline wind turbine. The results obtained from the clean wind turbine are compared with the ones obtained from the wind turbine equipped with the flow control devices. A significant increase in the average wind turbine power output has been found for all of the flow control device configurations and for the wind speed realizations studied in the present work. Furthermore, a best configuration case is proposed which has the largest increase of the average power output. In that case, increments on the average power output of 10.4% and 3.5% have been found at two different wind speed realizations. The thrust force and bending moment in the root of the blade have also been determined and compared with the values of the clean wind turbine. A residual increase in the bending moment of less than 1% has been found.
Highlights
The rise of installed wind power in Europe for the last fifteen years, along with the increasing significance of offshore wind energy, shows the relevance of research in the field of flow control for large wind turbines
The primary tools used in the current work to investigate the effects of the passive flow control devices on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5 MW baseline wind turbine are engineering models
In order to investigate the influence of the flow control devices on the power of the NREL 5 MW
Summary
The rise of installed wind power in Europe for the last fifteen years, along with the increasing significance of offshore wind energy, shows the relevance of research in the field of flow control for large wind turbines. Johnson et al [1] compiled some of the most important flow control techniques that could be used in wind turbines to assure a safe and most favourable operation under different atmospheric conditions. Many different flow control devices have been developed in the last decades. Most of them were created for aeronautical issues and this was its first research field and application [2]. They are frequently used in turbo machinery [3]. Wood [4] developed a four layer scheme
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