Recently there has been an increase in the demand for the utilization of clean renewable energy sources. This is a direct result of a rise in oil prices and an increased awareness of human induced climate change. Wind energy has been shown to be one of the most promising sources of renewable energy. With current technology, the low cost of wind energy is competitive with more conventional sources of energy such as coal. This however is only true in areas of high wind density. These areas are not as abundant and therefore the number of profitable sites is limited. This paper explores the possibility increasing the number of profitable sites by optimizing wind turbine blade design for low wind speed areas. The two methods of optimization that are investigated are first, optimizing the angle of attack and chord length for a given airfoil cross section at different positions along the blade and second implementing a swept blade profile. The torque generated from a blade using only the first optimization technique is compared to that generated from a blade using both techniques as well as that generated by NTK500/41 turbine using LM19.1 blades. Performance will be investigated using the CFD solver FLUENT.

Volume Subject Area:
Design, Analysis, Control and Diagnosis of Fluid Power Systems
Topics:
Blades, Wind turbines, Optimization, Wind energy, Airfoils, Chords (Trusses), Climate change, Coal, Computational fluid dynamics, Density, Design, Renewable energy, Renewable energy sources, Torque, Turbines, Wind, Wind velocity
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 by ASME
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