CFD analysis of NREL 10m wind turbine

• Main Author: Cao, Feng
• Other Authors: Jorg Uwe Schluter
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Aeronautical engineering::Aerodynamics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54010
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The aim of this research work is to find out a good computer simulation model that is able to accurately predict the aerodynamic behavior of the NREL 10m wind turbine. The main part of the NREL 10m wind turbine was constructed by using the S809 airfoil. As such, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of the 2-dimensional (2D) S809 airfoil was carried out prior to the CFD analysis of the 3D wind turbine model. Inviscid flow model, turbulent flow model (k-ε model) and the transition k-kl-omega model were used respectively in the CFD simulation of the 2D S809 airfoil. The CFD results of the three different flow models were then compared with the available NREL experimental results. As a result, we would be able to tell which flow model is the best among the three in terms of the ability of capturing the aerodynamic characteristics of the S809 airfoil. The best flow model would then be used for the CFD simulation of the 3D NREL 10m wind turbine. A 3D NREL 10m wind turbine model was built by using Solidworks by the author. The 3D Solidworks wind turbine model was then imported into ANSYS Workbench 14.0 for the modeling of air domain and meshing. A half NREL 10m wind turbine model with periodic boundary conditions and a full NREL 10m wind turbine (with two turbine blades) model were constructed respectively. CFD simulations had been run on both of the models and comparisons had been made between the two sets of the CFD simulation results obtained. Discussions were made on the accuracy of the CFD simulation in terms of predicting the aerodynamic characteristics of both the 2D S809 airfoil and the 3D NREL 10m wind turbine. Possible reasons behind the discrepancies between the CFD results and the experimental results were given. Finally, possible measures to improve the current CFD model and future work had been discussed.