Numerical optimization of horizontal-axis wind turbine blades with surrogate model

Abstract

Wind energy is a widely used and developed the renewable energy, which has developed rapidly. At present, the design of the horizontal axis wind turbine blade mainly used Blade Element Momentum theory. In this paper, an optimization method of the wind turbine blade was proposed for improving the output power. The local twist angles of the blade were optimized. This method combined the surrogate model and the numerical simulation methods. The kriging surrogate model was selected and the next calibration point was chosen by the efficient global optimization algorithm. In this paper, the aerodynamic performances of the optimized blades were discussed in detail and obtained by the numerical simulation method. It was shown that the wind power coefficients and the output powers of the optimized blades were increased. The wind power coefficients of two optimized blades were increased by 4.83% and 3.44%, respectively. The optimized blades were able to capture more kinetic energy from the wind, but the optimized blades were subjected to a greater structural load. The thrust and torque coefficients maintained an increasing tendency for the optimized blades.