CFD simulation of turbulent airflow around wind turbine airfoils

The airflow around wind turbines has proved to be a difficult problem to approach by means of today's Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes. One reason for this difficulty lies within the stall characteristics of turbine airfoils. For the purposes of this research, the popular commercial CFD code, FLUENT was employed to facilitate the understanding of airflow around wind turbines through the study of various turbulence models. Parallel processing was employed to enhance computational performance as well as lower simulation times. The system used for simulation is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Phase VI Wind Turbine. The coefficients of pressure for the airfoil were extracted from the simulated data and compared against data obtained during the NREL Phase VI Wind Turbine data campaign. Since power is a driving factor of the design of wind turbine blades, the aspect of power was also examined and compared. After the completion of the baseline study, a parametric study was carried out to examine the effects of rotor speed downstream of the turbine blades.