Effect of Inflow Conditions on Wind Turbine Blade Performance

One important uncertainty still associated with the design and operation of wind turbines is the response and performance characteristics for the atmospheric inflow conditions. A very important issue in wind turbine design is the validity of the models that are used in the design process, the models used in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) or the aerodynamic simulations. The aerodynamic part of the design basis has been restricted to non-shear turbulent inflow conditions. Therefore, measured detailed flow characteristics on a rotor in natural, turbulent flow environment are needed to be compared with 2D/3D CFD, wind tunnel data and other aerodynamic models. This will improve the prediction of the wind turbine response, but also represent a unique validation basis for 3D CFD computations and aerodynamic engineering models. The overall objective is to validate the CFD prediction with the field measurement.