| This work investigates the potential performance enhancement of wind turbines by attaching a spoiler to the root section of the blade. Passive mechanisms that improve performance often prove to be cost effective for two reasons: performance enhancement with little maintenance and no shut down time if mechanism fails. The goal is to determine whether attaching spoilers to root sections of wind turbine blades will appropriately alleviate stall that generally occurs due to the thickness of the airfoil used for structural integrity and the perceived high angle of attack. To simulate this situation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes, based on finite volume method (FVM) and finite difference method (FDM) formulations capable of solving the viscous, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations, are utilized. Further investigation is done by coupling the CFD code to a multi-body structural dynamics (MSD) code for optimization purposes of the fluid/structure interaction between the main airfoil section and the attached spoiler. Utilizing a fixed spoiler on the suction side of a wind turbine blade, there is evidence of power enhancement at the higher wind speeds but also showed a power deficit at lower wind speeds. Allowing the spoiler to rotate freely removed this deficit while maintaining appreciable power increase at the higher wind speeds. |
