Evaluation study of a Navier–Stokes CFD aeroelastic model of wind turbine airfoils in classical flutter

This paper describes a new aeroelastic numerical model, which combines a Navier–Stokes CFD solver with an elastic model and two coupling schemes for the study of the aeroelastic behaviour of wind turbine blades undergoing classical flutter. The basic characteristics of the aerodynamic and elastic models are presented together with the coupling schemes. The present model is evaluated by comparing with previous numerical results and the corresponding linear analytical solutions. Consequently, a parametric study is carried out. Conclusions are drawn about the ability of the model to handle the aeroelastic behaviour of an airfoil and about the most appropriate coupling scheme in terms of predicting the modal damping and the flutter limiting point. The present study shows that the predictions are only slightly affected by the coupling or the space discretization scheme and mainly by the turbulence model used.