Stochastic performance evaluation of horizontal axis wind turbine blades using non-deterministic CFD simulations

Abstract

In this paper, non-deterministic CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations have been performed to investigate the uncertain effects of stochastic boundary conditions on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbines. A NIPRC (non-intrusive probabilistic collocation) method is employed, which is coupled with a commercial flow solver. A 2D (two-dimensional) airfoil case is used to validate the non-deterministic simulation, where the angle of attack is considered as an uncertain parameter in a Gaussian distribution. The simulation results are compared with Monte Carlo simulation results. Based on the validation, non-deterministic CFD simulations were performed on a 3D (three-dimensional) wind turbine blades case, where the wind speed is considered as an uncertain parameter. The discussions mainly focus on the total performance variations and the uncertainty propagation in the fluid field. The simulation results show that the input uncertainty of the inlet velocity results in a high variation zone in the pressure distribution near the blade root, and which decreases from the root to the tip. With the wind speed increases, flow separation is observed. The separation vortex regions correspond to the maximum variation area, and the maximum variation extends to the trailing edge even to the whole suction side.