Numerical investigation of aerodynamic characteristics of a new wind turbine

Present work conducts computer simulations with the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package Fluent as a modeling tool to explore aerodynamic characteristics of a newly designed wind turbine for electricity generation. The governing equations consisting of three-dimensional, time-dependent conservation of mass and momentum are solved. The k-ε turbulence model is adopted for the turbulent flow computation. The three-dimensional, tapered and twisted wind turbine blades used in this study employ hybrid non-symmetrical airfoils in the design. In the computation of three-dimensional flow field, the rotating fluid with sliding mesh technique is used. The important aerodynamic properties, including pressure, torque, and aerodynamic power, are documented for broad ranges of wind speed and pitch angle. All the conclusions are drawn based on the results of grid-independent solutions.