Optimization of Air Cooling Ribs for 1.5MW Wind Rotor Based on CFD

Abstract

To enhance heat exchange between the rotor and external environment, many ribs are arranged on the cover of the machine. The air cooling condition for 1.5MW wind rotor is evaluated by Computational fluid dynamics(CFD). It is found that the density of the air, the flow velocity and the arrangement of the ribs on the rotor cover is the main factors impacting the air cooling effect of the rotor. Under the same running power, the air cooling condition becomes worse with the decrease of air density and becomes better with the increase of wind speed. To improve the cooling condition of the wind rotor, the arrangement of the ribs on the cover is optimized. The results show that the width ratio of the ribs and channels plays an important role in the heat convection. In all our cases, 0.5 is the best. Considering the manufacture processing, the arrangement of 400 ribs is selected in our optimization.