Aerodynamic shape optimized design for wind turbine blade using new airfoil series

This paper introduces a new airfoil series to optimize the aerodynamic shape of wind turbine blades. It is verified that the CQU-A airfoil series exhibits high aerodynamic performance by using the wind tunnel experimental data and RFOIL. The geometry of a 2 MW wind turbine blade with new airfoil families is designed preliminarily based on the shape of Tjaereborg 2 MW rotor. A multi-objective optimized model combining the maximum power coefficient of the wind turbine with minimum area of the blade surface is proposed for the pitch regulated wind turbine. An optimized code is developed based on the corrected blade element momentum (BEM) theory and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The optimization results show that, compared with that of the original rotor and the Tjaereborg rotor, not only the power coefficient and annual power production is improved, but also the area of the blade surface is reduced. The decreased area indicates that the mass of the optimized blades is reduced. It is beneficial for increasing the fatigue life and reducing cost of composite materials if the internal structure of the wind turbine blades is unchanged. Furthermore, the load of the blade root is effectively controlled by using this alternative optimization program.