NREL Phase IV wind turbine

Example simulation of a wind turbine

The NREL Phase IV wind turbine has two blades with NREL S809 airfoil featuring non-linear twist and linear taper. The turbine radius is $R=5.029$m and the aspect ratio is $AR=6$. This case considers the turbine with a collective pitch of $\theta=5$deg, rotating at $\omega=71.9$rpm, at a freestream velocity of $|\mathbf{V}_{ref}|=7$m/s. A structured mesh with 15 elements in the chordwise and 32 elements in the spanwise direction (for each blade) is used. The results are obtained with an azimuthal step of $\Delta\theta=6$deg ($\Delta t=0.0139$s) for 3 revolutions. The image below shows the pressure coefficient distribution.

The animation below shows the development of the wake.

NREL Phase IV wind turbine wake development

The images below show the pressure coefficient at $r/R=0.47$. The experimental results from Hand et al. [1] are shown for comparison.

Files

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nrel_wind_turbine.zip

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References

[1] Hand, M. and Simms, D., “Unsteady aerodynamic experiment phase VI: wind tunnel test configurations and available data campaigns,” NREL Technical Report TP-500-29955, 2001