Improving HAWT Blade Design with multiphase BEM application and GA based airfoils for Low Reynolds conditions

Resumo

Over the years, renewable energy sources are being implemented and improved. One such case is of
wind turbines. Some of the many challenges in this area are wind turbine placement and design. In low Reynolds
conditions coupled with highly turbulent air flow, the airfoil design is particularly complicated. By extension, this
complicates the design of the whole blade. In this paper, a fast method to determine good geometry for the wind
turbine blade is established. After flow conditions are set, by repeatedly applying the BEM method, more accurate
descriptions of the flow on the blade are obtained. Afterwards, finding best NACA airfoils as a base and using
Bezier curves as a geometry creator, a population of airfoils goes through a Genetic Algorithm. For each blade
region, a GA generated airfoil is found. Finally, the BEM method is used to determine the new expected power
coefficient with the new airfoil geometries. For the case used in this study, the final power coefficient obtained
was 0.28% lower than the target.