Investigation of the Flow Over NACA 63-415 Airfoil

In this article, a two-dimensional, incompressible flow around a NACA 63-415 airfoil, which is widely used as one of the commercial wind turbine blade profiles, is investigated. The goal of this research is to obtain the optimum angle of attack for this particular type of airfoil within a precise range. The Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) technique of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been employed to examine the flow where the Reynolds number is in the range of 105 to 3x106 and also for the angles of attack from 0° to 20°. These are the typical flow conditions mostly encountered in the real applications of wind turbine blades. The turbulent flow is modelled by means of the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model since its capability of simulating aerodynamic flows. The ratio of the lift force to the drag force acting on the airfoil has been chosen as a control parameter since the lift force increases the power generated by the turbine, whereas the drag force negatively affects the performance. The present numerical result shows that the maximum lift to drag ratio is observed between 2.5° and 3.5°, depending on the Reynolds number.

Keywords:

Angle of attack, CFD, NACA airfoil, Renewable energy Spalart-Allmaras model, Wind turbines,

PDF

___

Abbott IH, Von Doenhoff AE. 1959. Theory of Wing Sections, Including a Summary of Airfoil Data. New York, USA: Courier Corporation.
ANSYS Inc. 2013. ANSYS fluent 15.0 theory guide Tech. rep. Canonsburg, PA, USA.
Batchelor GK. 1967. An introduction to fluid dynamics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Betz A. 1966. Introduction to the Theory of Flow Machines. Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press.
Burton T, Jenkins N, Sharpe D, Bossanyi E. 2011. Wind Energy Handbook. 2nd ed. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Chakroun W, Al-Mesri I, Al-Fahad S. 2004. Effect of surface roughness on the aerodynamic characteristics of a symmetrical airfoil. Wind Engineering, 28(5): 547-564.
Chaudhary U, Nayak SK. 2015. Micro and small-scale HAWT blades airfoils study through CFD for low wind applications. In 2015 Annual IEEE India Conference; 17-20 December 2015; New Delhi, India.
Ferrer E, Munduate X. 2009. CFD Predictions of transition and distributed roughness over a wind turbine airfoil. 47th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting Including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition; 05 -08 January 2009; Orlando, Florida, USA.
Gharali K, Johnson DA. 2012. Numerical modeling of an S809 airfoil under dynamic stall, erosion and high reduced frequencies. Applied Energy, 93: 45-52.
Hafiz M, Noh M, Hussein A, Hamid A, Helmi R, Wirachman W, Mohd SN. 2012. Wind tunnel experiment for low wind speed wind turbine blade. In Applied Mechanics and Materials, 110: 1589-1593.
Hansen MOL. 2008. Aerodynamics of Wind Turbines. 2nd ed. London, UK: Earthscan.
Hinze JO. 1975. Turbulence. New York, USA: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.
Hochart C, Fortin G, Perron J, Ilinca A. 2008. Wind turbine performance under icing conditions. Wind Energy: An International Journal for Progress and Applications in Wind Power Conversion Technology, 11(4): 319-333.
Kuethe AM, Chow CY. 1998. Foundations of Aerodynamics. 5th ed. New York, USA: John Wiley & Sons.
Mulvany NJ, Chen L, Tu JY, Anderson B. 2004. Steady-state evaluation of two-equation RANS (reynolds-averaged navier-stokes) turbulence models for high-Reynolds number hydrodynamic flow simulations Tech. rep. Victoria, Australia.
Panigrahi DC, Mishra DP. 2014. CFD simulations for the selection of an appropriate blade profile for improving energy efficiency in axial flow mine ventilation fans. Journal of Sustainable Mining, 13(1): 15-21.
Patil BS, Thakare HR. 2015. Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis of wind turbine blade at various angles of attack and different Reynolds number. Procedia Engineering, 127: 1363-1369.
REN21-Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. 2018. Renewables 2018 Global Status Report. Paris, France.
Sagol E, Reggio M, Ilinca A. 2013. Issues concerning roughness on wind turbine blades. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 23: 514-525.
Salem H, Diab A, Ghoneim Z. 2013. CFD simulation and analysis of performance degradation of wind turbine blades in dusty environments. In 2013 International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications; 20-23 October 2013; Madrid, Spain.
Sayed MA, Kandil HA, Morgan ESI. 2012. Computational fluid dynamics study of wind turbine blade profiles at low Reynolds numbers for various angles of attack. In AIP Conference Proceedings, 1440: 467-479.
Timmer WA, Rooij RPJOM. 2003. Summary of the Delft University wind turbine dedicated airfoils. In 41st Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit; 6-9 January 2003; Reno, Nevada, USA.
Villalpando F, Reggio M, Ilinca A. 2012. Numerical study of flow around iced wind turbine airfoil. Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics, 6(1): 39-45.
Vendan SP, AravindLovelin S, Manibharathi M, Rajkumar C. 2010. Analysis of a wind turbine blade profile for tapping wind power at the regions of low wind speed. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2: 1-10.
Wilcox DC. 2006. Turbulence Modeling for CFD. 3rd ed. California, USA: DCW Industries.