REVIEW OF STUDIES ON THE CFD-BEM APPROACH FOR ESTIMATING POWER LOSSES OF ICED-UP WIND TURBINES

Abstract

The application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in wind turbine design and analysis is becoming increasingly common in research on wind energy, resulting in a better knowledge of the aerodynamic behaviour of rotors. Due to the deformation of blade airfoils on account of icing, a significant drop in aerodynamic performance brings wind turbines to lose considerable portions of their productivity. Estimating power degradation due to icing via 3D simulation, although it is essential to capture the three-dimensional turbulence effects, is very costly in computational resources despite technological development it then becomes unfeasible when it comes to different operation scenarios to estimate icing originated power losses. The Quasi-3D simulation based on the CFD-BEM method is a practical alternative for generating wind turbines power curves. It showed effectiveness in predicting performance up to a certain level. More than few studies in the literature have adopted this approach to generate the power curve for both clean (un-iced) and iced-up wind turbines. However, the methodology was not adequately presented and discussed for wind turbine icing. This paper reviews the results of almost all the up-to-date published papers that approached this method, summarizing the findings and federates the research in that field to conclude with concrete facts and details that advance research in this domain.