Analyses and Design of Wind Turbine Blades, please help!!!
 

Hi

I am a Mechanical Engineering student from UK.

I am doing my final year project on Analysis and Design Wind Turbines. I need to analyse the blade design by using CFD.

I am told to use Fluent, but I found out that XFOIL or XFLR5 is also a very good program for that.

Could you please tell me which one would you go for (or both), and what is the best way to analyse a wind turbine blade on CFD. In Fluent I know that if you are setting up a 3D wind turbine problem you need to use the MRF (moving reference frame) right? Can you use the MRF for 2D analyses as well?

I am going to analyse firstly 2D and then if possible I would like to build a 3D model of the wind turbine.

I thought of modelling it on Pro Engineer and then importing onto Gambit by saving it as a IGS file.

Do you know anything about 3D meshing and how is the easiest way to do it?

Any help is greatly appreciated

Many thanks

Hi

I have no idea about these XFOIL or XFLR5 program...but as far as i know Fluent is fine.

You are right you need to use the MRF in fluent if you want to have rotation but if you want to analyze your blade in stationary mode you dont need to use the MRF.

Concerning to Mesh. You can import the Pro engineer file directly i.e. you dont need to save it as IGS file. And i can not say how you can mesh it, you need to play with you gambit

Good Luck

wind turbine simulation
 

check out my blog for wind turbine simulations

cfdtoy.blogspot.com


/CFDtoy

Hi, I've modelled an Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine in 3D using Fluent.
Probably Fluent is the best option.
I used the Rotating Reference Frame: you need it to be able to model the problem as steady state.
I think it is not possible to do too accurate things in 2D. Maybe you can chop radial slices of the blade, then simulate it is moving with a velocity equal to the corresponding velocity at that radius and get the forces. Finally sum up all the contributions. (dont forget about the twist angle and change in the chord length)
About meshing, tetrahedras (4 node 3D elements) are probably the simplest elements you can use.

Meshing in ICEM CFD
 

Dear heavymag

Its easy to generate mesh in ANSYS ICEM CFD for 3D analysis. You need have expertise in ICEM CFD. Let me know if you need any further help.

Thanks

Use any standard mesh generation software
 

Hi

You can use any standard mesh generation software available. There are softwares specifically meant for blade design. But I dont think they are capable of handling wind turbine blade. ICEM CFD should be good for your application.

Thanks

project review
 

Hi I too am doing my project and struggling to find similar projects to do the review. Could you please provide me a copy of your project so that I could review it along my report. If you are happy with it would you be able to mail me on colpratik@gmail.com.
Any help is well appreciated.

project review
 

Hi I too am doing my project and struggling to find similar projects to do the review. Could you please provide me a copy of your project so that I could review it along my report. If you are happy with it would you be able to mail me on colpratik@gmail.com.
Any help is well appreciated.