FLOW ANALYSIS OF STRAIGHT AND SWEPT EDGE WIND TURBINE BLADES IN BLADE AND WAKE REGIONS

This paper presents the comparison of the wake sizes and shapes between two different designs of a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) rotor blades; one a straight edged and the other with a backward sweep. The straight edge blade was constructed so that it is optimal for on coming wind and rotation speeds with 7m/s and 23rpm. The blade has a length of 20m and uses a constant airfoil cross section. The swept edge blade has the same characteristics as the straight edge except for the trajectory of the edge. Each swept blade has the same cross section with the same dimensions at the same distance from the hub as its corresponding section in the straight edge blade. The analysis was done at a range of velocities from 7 m/s to 18 m/s. It was confirmed that the stall region observed by previous studies is in fact due to the flow separation throughout the span a the blade for both the straight and swept blades. A comparison of wake lengths for both straight and swept blades was done for a range of wind velocities. It was shown that the wake length for swept edged blades were longer than for straight blades and both start decreasing beyond the stall region. From a comparison of flow separation angles from experiments and CFD computations; both were observed to follow the same trends at high Reynolds numbers.