REVIEW ARTICLE


A Computational Aerodynamics Simulation of the NREL Phase II Rotor



N.S. Tachos*, 1, A.E. Filios*, 2, D.P. Margaris1, J.K. Kaldellis3
1 Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics Department, University of Patras, GR-265 04 Patras, Greece
2 Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering Educators, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Athens, Greece
3 Laboratory of Soft Energy Applications and Environmental Protection, Mechanical Engineering Department, Technical Education Institute of Piraeus, P.O. Box 41046, Athens 12201, Greece

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2009
Volume: 3
First Page: 9
Last Page: 16
Publisher Id: TOMEJ-3-9
DOI: 10.2174/1874155X00903010009

Article History:

Received Date: 30/03/2008
Revision Received Date: 07/05/2008
Acceptance Date: 14/11/2008
Electronic publication date: 6/2/2009
Collection year: 2009

© 2009 Tachos et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to these authors at the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics Department, University of Patras, GR-265 04 Patras, Greece; Tel. and Fax: +30 2610997202; E-mail: taxos@mech.upatras.gr; Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering Educators, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Athens, Greece; E-mail: fmtulab1@otenet.gr


Abstract

The work presented in this article aims to the calculation of the aerodynamic characteristics of the NREL phase II rotor that is a horizontal axis downwind wind turbine rotor and which is assumed to stand isolated in the space. The Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations combined with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model that describes the three dimensional steady state flow about the wind turbine rotor are solved with the aid of a commercial CFD code. A structured grid of approximately 3.3 million cells formulates the computational domain. The numerical results for the considered wind turbine rotor are benchmarked against wind tunnel measurements obtained at free stream velocity of 7.2m/s in the framework of VISCEL project. The comparisons show that the used CFD code can accurately predict the span-wise loading of the wind turbine rotor.

Keywords: Wind turbine, NREL phase II rotor, VISCEL project, CFD.