Prediction Of Performance Parameters And Determination Of Aerodynamic Characteristics Of Wind Turbine Airfoil Using Cfd Modeling

In the current situation of global energy crisis, generation of energy derived from renewablernenergy resource has grown a significant attention. Wind energy is a very interesting due to thernfact that fuel is free of cost. The most important aspect of wind energy technology is the windrnturbine and its aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoil forming the blade. Thus predicting thernperformance parameters and determining aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil section arernimportant. However, this requires continued experimental wind tunnel test and validation toolsrnsuch as computational fluid dynamics (CFD).rnThe primary objective of this study was learning the CFD software and its applications.rnSecondly, this study was focused on predicting aerodynamic characteristics of an airfoil forrnvarying angles of attack (AOAs). Simulation was done to deduce aerodynamic parameters (lift,rndrag, lift to drag ratio, contour plot of velocity and pressure distribution over the airfoil section).rnThis can reduce dependence on wind tunnel testing. The simulation was done on airflow over arntwo – dimensional NACA 63-415 airfoil using FLUENT (version 6.3.26) at various angles ofrnattack varied from -50 to 200 using two turbulence models (S-A and SST k- ω) with the aim ofrnselecting the most suitable model. Domain discretization was carried out using structuredrnquadrilateral grid generated with GAMBIT (version 2.3.16), the fluent pre-processing tool.rnComparisons and validation were made with available experimental data for NACA 63-415rnairfoil with numerical results. Accordingly, it was found that the two turbulence models achievedrna reasonable and a good agreement in predicting the coefficients especially for angle of attacksrnprior to stall. Among the model, studied the most appropriate turbulence model for thernsimulations were the SST k- ω two equation models, which had good agreement with thernexperimental data than S-A one equation model. As a result, it was decided to use the SST k- ωrnturbulence model for the main analysis with acceptable deviations in results (9.028% for lift andrn12.203 % for drag coefficients).rnThis study concluded that CFD simulation provides sufficiently accurate results for a majority ofrnAOAs. The discrepancy in calculating the lift and drag values comes from limitations in thernturbulence model behavior. However, the majority of the lift and drag curves match thernexperimental data. Finally, this study includes simulation results of Adama I wind turbine airfoilrnsection and predicted results was complied.

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