Improvement of bem analysis to incorporate stall delay effect and the study of atmospheric boundary layer effect on the wake characteristics of NREL phase VI turbine

• Main Author: Ijaz Fazil Syed Ahmed Kabir
• Other Authors: Ng Yin Kwee, Eddie
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75824
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Steadily increasing energy consumption, fluctuating fuel costs and concerns about global climate changes have led to the research and evaluation of alternative renewable energies. The wind turbine is among the promising alternative energy sources that have recently gained more attention. In this work, the challenging aspects involved in modelling the rotor aerodynamics and wakes behind the wind turbines are studied. This report covers the literature review of Blade Element Momentum (BEM) analysis of wind turbine, limitations of BEM method, effect of stall delay, wake aerodynamics, atmospheric boundary layer and its effects on the wake characteristics and previous different wake models of near and far wake regions. In this project, experimental data of NREL Phase VI Turbine (sequence S) were used to corroborate the results. There are two main objectives of this project. The first objective is to improve the BEM analysis to account for the three-dimensional (3D) effects due to the rotation of the turbine. The second objective is to contemplate on the effects of atmospheric boundary layers (ABL) on the wake characteristics. These two objectives act as a roadway to enhance coupled BEM-CFD analysis, which is left for the future works. In the coupled BEM-CFD analysis, the BEM method will be applied to calculate the aerodynamic forces of the aerofoil sections along the blade span. The main drawback of BEM analysis is the use of the twodimensional (2D) aerofoil characteristics (CL and CD ) which considers only the axial flow but not radial or spanwise flow along the blade span. This leads to a considerable difference in the lift coefficients between the rotating and non rotating blades, especially at inboard sections of the blade. This 3D phenomenon is called stall delay. The current study includes different proposals for the extrapolation of 2D aerofoil characteristics of the S809 aerofoil and their implementation in BEM analysis and comparison of power predicted with experimental results. Also, four existing stall delay correction models in BEM analysis are examined. In general, these models result in over-prediction of power, especially at high inflow wind speeds. An improved inverse BEM method is developed to compute 3D aerofoil characteristics at different radial locations along the blade span. In addition to five radial locations as described in the NREL/NASA Ames test analysis, 13 additional radial locations are considered for a better understanding of stall delay. A new BEM model with the local radius effect of aerofoil characteristics (other than as a function of Reynolds number and angle of attack only) is proposed. Implementation of the new model showed a good agreement with aerofoil characteristics distribution along the blade span with the 3D aerofoil characteristics computed from the CFD analyses using inverse BEM method. MATLAB code was developed for both BEM and Inverse BEM analyses. Most important in the wind farm analysis is the effect of the atmospheric boundary layer since the turbulence properties of the atmosphere affect the wake characteristics. In this work, the NREL Phase VI Turbine is virtually placed in different atmospheric boundary layers from open sea to city/forest. Simulations are performed with direct rotor modelling using sliding mesh analysis. Since the experiment results of wake characteristics of the NREL Phase VI Turbine was not available, different empirical models are used for comparison. It was evident that wake recovers at a faster rate as the roughness length of the ground increases. Also, it was noted that the turbulence intensity of the wake varies both laterally and vertically, but existing analytical wake turbulence intensity models provide only an averaged value The possible methods for indirect rotor modelling like Actuator Disk, Actuator Line and Actuator Surface methods that lead to coupled BEM-CFD analysis of wind turbine is discussed in brief. The possible ways of improving these indirect rotor models by using the aerodynamic forces computed from improved BEM analysis and wake aerodynamics are provided for the future works.