NACA2412 airfoil based method for design and aerodynamic analysis of small HAWT using modified BEM approach

Abstract

Efficient utilization of wind energy depends on careful selection and suitable design of Wind Turbine (WT) blades. Small scale Wind Turbines (SWT) normally operate in the low range of Angle of Attack (AoA). This makes the task even more difficult for designing and optimization of WT blades. This article deals with an airfoil based computational approach to design the blade for a standalone small scale Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT). A procedure has been proposed to find the important parameters and analyze the performance characteristics for a three bladed HAWT operating under the wake rotation. Computational code has been written to find optimum blade profile. Twist angle variation, chord length and other related parameters are determined with the help of program. Comparison between different types of airfoil has been made to figure out the most suitable one. Airfoil selection and design approach are intended to make Wind Turbine blade efficient specially under low range of AoA. Characteristics of the Wind Turbine obtained analytically from this procedure are compared with several other reported earlier in some of the literatures. The result obtained by the proposed procedure is simpler and more efficient than BEM theory – a method normally employed for blade design.