Sharif Digital Repository

A series of experiments were carried out to study the unsteady wakes behind an oscillating airfoil. The airfoil is a section of a wind turbine blade oscillating in pitch about the quarter chord axis at various reduced frequencies, oscillation amplitude and mean angles of attack. Real time velocity profiles were obtained using total and static pressure at 35 vertically aligned points behind the airfoil via two similar rakes. The rakes were located at a distance of 1.5 chord length behind the model. The results show great influence of oscillation amplitude and reduced frequency on the wake velocity profiles. Copyright © 2007 by ASME  

An extensive experimental investigation to study the effect of the reduced frequency and surface grit roughness on an airfoil oscillating in plunging motion has been conducted. The application of surface grit roughness simulates surface irregularities that occur on the wind turbine blades. Data were taken at a Reynolds number of 0.42*10* and at a range of reduced frequencies, k=0.03-0.1. Tests were conducted at plunging amplitudes of ±10cm and ±15cm and at mean angles of attack of 0°, 10° and 18°. It was found that the width of the hysteresis loop, position of the figure-8 shape, slope of the lift coefficient curve and maximum lift force have been influenced by both oscillation frequency and... 

An improved phenomenological model is presented for numerical simulation of a Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma actuator for separation control of high angle of attack flow over a wind turbine airfoil. Based on existing numerical models and experimental measurements, a new model is proposed for prediction of the length of a plasma extent which is more consistent with previous observations. The electrical and hydrodynamic solvers used in the present study are validated against published experimental data. Then the applicability of a DBD actuator, mounted on a DU 91-W2-250 airfoil is extensively analyzed for a wide range of operating voltages and frequencies. The analysis is completely... 

Plasma actuator is a flow control device which may be used to improve the performance of wind turbine blades at low airspeeds. One of the most robust numerical models to simulate the interaction of the plasma actuator with the fluid flow is the electrostatic model. This model is improved by the authors. Due to the high cost of performing experimental optimization, the optimization of plasma actuators may be investigated by this numerical model. To optimize the aerodynamic performance of a Delft University (DU) wind turbine airfoil in a full stall condition, we used the operational parameters (voltage, frequency and the waveform) applied to the plasma actuator as the main design variables. We... 

Extensive experimental investigation was conducted to study the effect of leading-edge roughness on the state of the boundary layer of a wind turbine blade section. The application of surface grit roughness simulates surface irregularities that occur on the wind turbine blades. The measurements were done using multiple hot-film sensors and surface pressure transducers in both static and plunging oscillation of the airfoil. Frequency domain analysis was used to determine the state of the unsteady boundary layer  

A series of experiments were conducted to study the effect of leading-edge roughness on the state of the boundary layer of a wind turbine blade section using multiple hot-film sensors. The experiments involved static and dynamic tests, where airfoil motion was of plunging type oscillation. The application of surface grit roughness simulates surface irregularities that occur on the wind turbine blades. The measurements showed that increasing the angle of attack results in movement of transition locations toward the leading edge. Surface roughness moved the transition point toward the leading edge and caused early trailing edge turbulent separation, which resulted in reducing the effectiveness... 

In this study a multi-objective genetic algorithm is utilized to obtain a Pareto optimal set of solutions for geometrical characteristics of airfoil sections for 10-meter blades of a horizontal axis wind turbine. The performance of the airfoil sections during the process of energy conversion is evaluated deploying a 2D incompressible unsteady CFD solver and the second law analysis. Artificial neural networks are trained employing CFD obtained data sets to represent objective functions in an algorithm which implements exergetic performance and integrity characteristics as optimization objectives. The results show that utilizing the second law approach along with Pareto optimality concept... 

Extensive tests were carried out on a section of a wind turbine blade. The effect of reduced frequency on the boundary layer transition point of the model oscillating in plunge has been investigated. The spatial-temporal progressions of the transition point and the state of the unsteady boundary layer were measured using multiple hot-film sensors. The measurements showed that reduced frequency highly affects variations of the transition point and results in a hysteresis loop in the dynamic transition locations. The dominated frequencies of the boundary layer are found to be a function of the reduced frequency and mean angle of attack