Aeroelastic Behavior of Wind Turbine Rotors

Extraction of wind energy by use of wind turbine has proven to be an attractive augmentation for ever growing energy requirements. The size of turbine blades has steadily increased so that single machines can deliver power in excess of 2 Mega Watts. Owing to this, blade flexibility assumes great importance in design and operation. This study focuses on behaviour of wind turbine blades due to inherent flexibility. Extensive analysis is carried out using both linear panel method and more complex Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach. A procedure is also presented to couple aerodynamic and structural solutions resulting in fully converged bent shapes of typical stall regulated wind turbine blades.