Abstract
When compared with horizontal-axis wind turbines, vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have the primary advantages of insensitivity to wind direction and turbulent wind, simple structural configuration, less fatigue loading, and easy maintenance. In recent years, large-scale VAWTs have attracted considerable attention. Wind loads on a VAWT must be determined prior to structural analyses. However, traditional blade element momentum theory cannot consider the effects of turbulence and other structural components. Moreover, a large VAWT cannot simply be regarded as a planar structure, and 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is computationally prohibitive. In this regard, a practical wind load simulation method for VAWTs based on the strip analysis method and 2D shear stress transport (SST) k-ω model is proposed. A comparison shows that the wind pressure and aerodynamic forces simulated by the 2D SST k-ω model match well with those obtained by 2.5D large eddy simulation (LES). The influences of mean wind speed profile, turbulence, and interaction of all structural components are considered. A large straight-bladed VAWT is taken as a case study. Wind loads obtained in this study will be applied to the fatigue and ultimate strength analyses of the VAWT in the companion paper.
Highlights
Renewable energy, especially wind energy, increasingly attracts the interest of the world nowadays.Vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) are currently being developed to take advantage of wind power.Wind loads on a vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) at the aerodynamic force and wind pressure levels must be comprehensively investigated
High-fidelity simulations [40] can give more accurate results based on which wind loads and output power can be estimated more precisely, while a 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the wind loads on a VAWT is extremely computationally intensive
The simulated wind loads, including wind pressures and aerodynamic forces obtained from the two models above, are compared in this subsection
Summary
Especially wind energy, increasingly attracts the interest of the world nowadays. An efficient simulation method is required to estimate the wind loads on the VAWT to consider the influence of all structural components on the wind field of a VAWT and the varying wind speed along the height of the VAWT. A simulation method of determining wind loads, including wind pressures and aerodynamic forces, on the entire VAWT is proposed.
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