CFD Simulation of Turbulent Airflow Around Wind Turbine Airfoils

The airflow around wind turbines has proved to be a difficult problem to approach by means of today’s Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes. One reason for this difficulty lies within the stall characteristics of turbine airfoils. For the purposes of this research, the popular commercial CFD code, FLUENT will be employed to facilitate the understanding of airflow around wind turbines through the study of various turbulence models. Parallel processing will be employed to enhance computational performance as well as lower simulation times. The system used for simulation is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Phase VI Wind Turbine. The coefficients of pressure for the airfoil shall be extracted from the simulated data and compared against data obtained during the NREL Phase VI Wind Turbine data campaign. Since power is a driving factor of the design of wind turbine blades, the aspect of power will also be examined and compared. After a baseline study has been concluded, a parametric study will be carried out that examines the effects of rotor angular velocity.