a b s t r a c tThe study develops a methodology for the aero-structural design including consideration of the starting of a small wind turbine blade. To design a fast-starting blade, starting time was combined with output power in an objective function and the blade allowable stress was considered as a constraint. The output power and the starting time were calculated by the blade-element momentum theory and the simple beam theory was employed to compute the stress and deflection along the blade. A genetic algorithm was employed to solve the constrained objective function, finding an optimal blade for which the starting time was small and output power was high while the stress limitation was also met. Considering the hollow cross-sectional model for the structural analysis, the design variables consist of the chord, twist and the shell thickness along the blade. Results showed that a hollow blade expedites the starting at low speeds by decreasing the blade inertia while the resultant stress along the blade does not exceed the allowable stress. By increasing the contribution of the starting time in the objective function, both the external and internal geometry of the blade help the starting and also provide more powerful hollow blades compared to the solid ones.
Since the air density reduces as altitude increases, operation of small wind turbines (SWTs), which usually have no pitch adjustment, remains challenging at high altitudes due largely to the reduction of starting aerodynamic torque. By reducing the moment of inertia through the use of hollow blades, this study aims to speed up the starting while maintaining the structural integrity of the blades and high output power. A horizontal axis turbine with hollow blades was designed for two sites in Iran with altitude of 500 m and 3000 m. The design variables are the distributions of the chord, twist, and shell thickness and the improvement of output power and starting are the design goals. Blade-element momentum (BEM) theory was employed to calculate these goals and beam theory was used for the structural analysis to investigate whether the hollow timber blades could withstand the aerodynamic and centrifugal forces. A combination of the goals formed the objective function and a genetic algorithm (GA) was used to find a blade whose output power at a predetermined tip speed ratio (TSR) and the starting performance were high while the stress limit was met. The results show that hollow blades have starting times shorter than solid ones by approximately 70%. However, in the presence of generator resistive torque, the algorithm could not find a blade for an altitude of 3000 m. To solve that problem, the tip speed ratio was added to other design variables and another optimization was done which led to the optimal blades for both altitudes.
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