Trailing edge noise mitigation investigation for wind turbine blades

Abstract

Wind turbines offer one of the most mature technologies for providing large scale renewable energy to society in an economically viable way. Although not on par with the price of conventional energy sources yet, the cost of energy has been steadily decreasing as the technology continues to develop. Unfortunately, like with all energy sources, there are some problems with this form of generation. Among these, sound emissions from wind turbines are one of the problems people who live close to the installed machines may be exposed to. Past studies show that these noise emissions are dominated by aeroacoustic noise and of the many mechanisms that lead to aeroacoustic noise, the interaction between the unsteady flow and the trailing edge seems to constitute the largest portion of the overall sound spectrum. Modifications to the trailing edge geometry will change how the fluid interacts with the trailing edge and can be used to change the resulting noise emission. This study will investigate the effect passive trailing edge devices have on the overall noise emission from a wind turbine, in an attempt to reduce the aeroacoustic noise being generated by the turbine.