Aerodynamic Characteristics Analysis And Design Of The Flexible Wind Turbine Airfoil

In the light of the rapid recent development in science and technology, the unit capacity increases ceaselessly in domestic and foreign wind power market. As an important part of wind power generation system, the wind turbine blades will also continue to become large scale, which will in turn bring about series of problems to be solved, such as blade flexibility, the increase costs of transportation, installation, operation, maintenance and the manufacturing. A comprehensive consideration of various factors is a must in order to obtain the maximum economic benefits; especially the blade flexibility has become a noticeable problem must be considered in large wind turbine blade design.Based on this, the design idea of flexible adaptive wind turbine blade is proposed, the blade designed can take the initiative to adjust its aerodynamic shape corresponding to different wind conditions so that it can maintain the best working state.In this paper, with reference to the mechanism of kites and sailing sails, sail wing type flexible wind turbine blade design is put forward. A theoretical investigation has been made of the two-dimensional, aerodynamic characteristics of flexible airfoils or sails with no thickness. The load and deformation characteristics of the airfoil have been got. Based on the thin airfoil theory using the vortex panel method to obtain the aerodynamic performance of an airfoil with potential flow. Combined with the CFD method gives the applicable scope of potential flow theory and the main influence factors on its aerodynamic characteristics are analyzed. Besides, analysis of calculating modal has been made, which lay the foundation for the fluid-solid coupling research. Based on the research, optimization design schemes of sail wing type flexible wind turbine blade airfoil are proposed.