Numerical Simulation of the Unsteady Flow and Power of Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine using Sliding Mesh

Horizontal axis wind turbine (hereafter HAWT) is the common equipment in wind turbine generator systems in recent years. The paper relates to the numerical simulation of the unsteady airflow around a HAWT of the type Phase VI with emphasis on the power output. The rotor diameter is 10-m and the rotating speed is 72 rpm. The simulation was undertaken with the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT 6.2 using the sliding meshes controlled by user-defined functions (UDF). Entire mesh node number is about 1.8 million and it is generated by GAMBIT 2.2 to achieve better mesh quality. The numerical results were compared with the experimental data from NREL UAE wind tunnel test. The comparisons show that the numerical simulation using sliding meshes can accurately predict the aerodynamic performance of the wind turbine rotor.