Development and Application of a Simulation Tool for Vertical and Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines

Abstract

A double-multiple-streamtube vertical axis wind turbine simulation and design module has been integrated within the open-source wind turbine simulator QBlade. QBlade also contains the XFOIL airfoil analysis functionalities, which makes the software a single tool that comprises all functionality needed for the design and simulation of vertical or horizontal axis wind turbines. The functionality includes two dimensional airfoil design and analysis, lift and drag polar extrapolation, rotor blade design and wind turbine performance simulation. The QBlade software also inherits a generator module, pitch and rotational speed controllers, geometry export functionality and the simulation of rotor characteristics maps. Besides that, QBlade serves as a tool to compare different blade designs and their performance and to thoroughly investigate the distribution of all relevant variables along the rotor in an included post processor. The benefits of this code will be illustrated with two different case studies. The first case deals with the effect of stall delaying vortex generators on a vertical axis wind turbine rotor. The second case outlines the impact of helical blades and blade number on the time varying loads of a vertical axis wind turbine.

A new 360° airfoil model for predicting airfoil thrust potential in vertical-axis wind turbine designs

“…It does not encompass analysis or experimentation of VAWT configurations, 6,[17][18][19] evaluation of wake interactions on the obverse side of rotation. 20,21 Rather, it expands on theoretical estimates of airfoil performance in the post-stall regime.…”

Nonlinear Lifting Line Theory Applied to Vertical Axis Wind Turbines: Development of a Practical Design Tool

“…This sections compares the quasi steady state performance predictions of the LLT method with those of a DMST model, already implemented in QBlade [11], and those of a 2D U-RANS simulation carried out at the University of Florence (described in [12; 13]). The rotor used in this comparison is a straight bladed H-Darrieus rotor, simulated in a one bladed configuration (Table 1, Figure 8).…”

Design of an Offshore Three-Bladed Vertical Axis Wind Turbine for Wind Tunnel Experiments

“…However, the investigations on the blade airfoils of VAWTs are far fewer than those have been carried out on the HAWTs, and the parametric investigation on a wide range of designs is experimentally expensive and time taking procedure. In this context, Marten et al [5] have developed a fast processing algorithm 'QBlade' based on double multiple stream tube (DMST) model as described in [6,7]. The application of DMST for performance prediction of the VAWTs were also observed in the studies of Beri and Yao [8], Biadgo et al [9] and Wang et al [10].…”

“…5), one at the upstream of the turbine rotation (0°-180°) and another at the downstream of the turbine rotation (180°-360°). Each of the turbine blades is discretized into number of elements, and the complete rotational cycle of each element is divided into steps of 5° [5]. The flow through the turbine blades is sub-divided into a large number of streamtubes.…”

“…The analysis performed in the present work are based on double multiple stream tube (DMST) model using QBlade v0.9 [5], developed for the VAWTs (particularly, Darrieus type). The first step for this analysis is to calculate the forces acting on the VAWT blades (Fig.…”