Abstract
This paper focuses on the deployment and evaluation of a separated pitch control at blade tip (SePCaT) control strategy for large megawatt (MW) wind turbine blade and explorations of innovative blade designs as a result of such deployment. SePCaT configurations varied from five to thirty percent of the blade length in 5 percentage increments (SePCaT5, SePCaT10, SePCaT15, SePCaT20, SePCaT25, and SePCaT30) are evaluated by comparing them to aerodynamical responses of the traditional blade. For low, moderate, high, and extreme wind speed variations treated as 10, 20, 30, and 40 percent of reference wind speeds, rotor power abatement in region 3 of the wind speed power curve is realized by feathering full length blade by 6, 9, 12, and 14 degrees, respectively. Feathering SePCaT30, SePCaT25, SePCaT20, and SePCaT15 by 14, 16, 26, and 30 degrees, respectively, achieves the same power abatement results when compared to traditional blade at low wind speeds. Feathering SePCaT30, SePCaT25, and SePCaT20 by 18, 26, and 30 degrees on the other hand has the same effect at high wind speeds. SePCaT30 feathered to 26 and 30 degrees has the same abatement effects when compared to traditional blade at high and extreme wind speeds.
Highlights
The growth of large wind turbines manifests many design challenges as rotor sizes and tower heights scale to continue to accommodate larger land based and offshore wind turbine power capacities
SePCaT30 is capable of achieving lift factors of 0.3, 0.2, and 0.1, lift reduction of 0.4 and 0.3 can only be produced by SePCaT30 for pitched to feather (P-F) rotations of 28 and 36 degrees, respectively, in region void of lift degradation
It is observed that lift factor reduction for all separated pitch control at blade tip (SePCaT) and traditional control is more pronounced when pitched to feather than when pitched to stall
Summary
The growth of large wind turbines manifests many design challenges as rotor sizes and tower heights scale to continue to accommodate larger land based and offshore wind turbine power capacities. Many researchers have proposed alternate control strategies for wind turbines Some of these include telescopic blades, trailing edge-flaps, transitional tabs, plasma actuation, flow detectors, and active flaps to name a few [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Daynes and Weaver [9, 10] conducted tests on a NACA63-418 blade section equipped with a 20 percent chord length trailing edge-flap controller and observed that the lift coefficient changed by a value of 1.0 when the flap angle was varied from −10 to 10 degrees. Wilson et al [18] investigated trailing edgeflaps for controlling and mitigating aerodynamic loads by 20–30 percent enabling energy optimization All of these wind turbine control surface designs, researches, and analyses were based on 2D analysis.
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