Numerical analysis of aerodynamic characteristics of a bumped leading edge turbine blade

Authors

  • Zoran Čarija
  • Emil Marušić
  • Zdenko Novak
  • Sanjin Fućak Department of Thermodynamics and Energy Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Vukovarska 58

Keywords:

wind turbine blade, aerodynamics, humpback whale, bumped leading edge, renewable energy

Abstract

This paper investigates the aerodynamic effects of waving bumps inspired by a humpback whale fin on the leading edge of a turbine blade. A comparison was made between performances of two isolated blades: a blade with a sinusoidally shaped bumped leading edge (LE) and one with a straight leading edge; both based on the same NACA0012 cross section profile. The simulations used a Reynolds number of 1.8·10^5 for a range of angles of attack from 0º to 30º. The results for the bumped blade have shown a substantial gain in aerodynamic characteristics for certain angles of attack (AoA). At AoA larger than 10º, the bumped blade has shown an increase in lift (3%-9.5%) and decreased drag, while negligible differences in lift and a smaller drag were exhibited for AoA smaller than 10º. Overall, thebumped blade provided greater advantage in lift to drag ratio (approximately 50%) over the AoA range from 0º to 20º. The sinusoidal leading edge also delayed the stall crisis, increasing the critical angle of attack by approximately 5º over the one for the blade with a straight leading edge.

Downloads

Published

2014-05-30

Issue

Engineering Review, Vol. 34, No. 2

Section

Articles

License

Engineering review uses the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International License, which governs the use, publishing and distribution of articles by authors, publishers and the wider general public.

The authors are allowed to post a digital file of the published article, or the link to the published article (Enginering Review web page) may be made publicly available on websites or repositories, such as the Author’s personal website, preprint servers, university networks or primary employer’s institutional websites, third party institutional or subject-based repositories, and conference websites that feature presentations by the Author(s) based on the published article, under the condition that the article is posted in its unaltered Engineering Review form, exclusively for non-commercial purposes.

The journal Engineering Review’s publishing procedure is performed in accordance with the publishing ethics statements, defined within the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit. The Ethics statement is available in the document Ethics Policies.