Optimal Design of Wind Turbine Blades with Wilson and BEM Method Integrated

Abstract

This paper presented a new dynamic optimal design method of wind turbine blade which combined the Wilson model with the BEM aerodynamic model. Considering the wind energy utilization coefficient as the target function, the Wilson theory was used to optimize a 1.5MW blades aerodynamic shape. The revised distribution of chord and twist angle was nearly of linear change in the main output power section of blade. The optimized wind energy utilization coefficient can reach 0.552, which is very closed to the Betz limitation. In the part of the calculation of aerodynamic performance, considering both the effect of solidity and eddy current loss on the aerodynamic performance calculation, and also considering the sensitivity of the initial value in a nonlinear equation, it utilized the blade element momentum theory (BEM) which was a classical method on the aerodynamic performance of blade to calculate the aerodynamic performance.The results shows the optimized power output can be up to 1.3426MW, and compared with the rated power, the efficiency reached 89%.