Numerical Simulation For Aerodynamical Analysis And Performance Prediction Of HAWT Rotor

With the wide spread of wind power utilization in our country, aerodynamic performance prediction of wind turbine rotor becomes more and more important. In order to accurately predict HAWT rotor performance, aerodynamic characteristics of a horizontal axis wind turbine rotor at different wind speeds and different rotating speeds have been studied in present dissertation by CFD. An incompressible Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes solver was used, which bases on pressure correction approach. The main contents and conclusions are as following:Firstly, the current situation of wind power industry and wind turbines in our country was described and a brief description about the methods of wind turbine aerodynamic performance study was presented.Secondly, basic theories about wind turbine were introduced, such as momentum theory, blade element theory and BEM theory. CFD theory was introduced in detail, including flow control equations, turbulent models and the theories on discrete equations.Then, an upwind HAWT rotor was seleted as investigation objective of numerical simulation. A three-dimensional geometry model was built and the computation domain was meshed. Numerical model used in present dissertation bases on finite volume method and simplec algorithm. Three turbulent models were compared, of which k-ωsst turbulent model is the best one. Flow characteristics at different wind speeds were analyzed and compared with experimental data. Good agreement was achieved between the k-ωsst turbulent model simulation and the experimental result.Finally, the flow on whole blade and different spanwise sections were analyzed. Simulation result shows that flow charateristic is influenced seriously by 3D rotational effect, which can result in stall delay. Power and efficiency characteristics of this wind turbine vs wind speed were studied at rotating speeds of 58rpm, 72rpm and 90rpm. The result shows that higher aerodynamic performance can be achieved at the rotating speed of 90rpm for six wind speeds studied in present dissertation.