Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Vortex Generators and Winglets in Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine Blade Design

Most of the available research on horizontal-axis wind turbines focuses on either lab-scale (15-60 cm rotor diameter) or commercial large-scale (80-130 m rotor diameter). The current work fills this gap because residential-scale turbines will be one of the key technologies during the next ten years. The current administration promotes dependence on renewables to cut carbon footprint. Therefore, the present work runs wind tunnel experimentation and performs 48 numerical simulations to evaluate the performance of a residential-scale wind turbine with a blade generated from GOE 447 airfoil at three wind speeds (7.5, 12.5, and 17.5 m/s). Three different vortex generator designs were tested when added on the suction side of a 7-m blade. Two of those designs produced more power than a baseline rotor does (7.2% and 10.9% more power than the baseline rotor were achieved at 12.5 m/s wind speed). Furthermore, three winglet designs were added to the baseline design to investigate their influence on power production. The 90 deg, 60 deg, and 30 deg cant angles produce 5.0%,7.9%, and 6.9% more power than the baseline design.