Unsteady Aerodynamics Experiment Phase VI: Wind Tunnel Test Configurations and Available Data Campaigns

Abstract

and Bob Kufeld helped us understand the challenges of converting our field measurement turbine to a wind tunnel model. Thanks also to Bob Kufeld for rotating through our data collection stations to give us a break. Thanks to Janet Beegle and Joe Sacco for coordinating NASA resources. Thanks to David Nishikawa for incorporating last-minute changes to the NASA file format. Art Silva and Ben Bailey kept all the NASA instrumentation operating smoothly. Rob Fong continued to troubleshoot the balance scales until they worked. Thanks also to the crew on the first shift that initiated the walk-through process so that we could maximize our time in the tunnel. We appreciate Romy Montano for resetting the wind tunnel breakers when needed and Rusty Hunt for getting the tunnel ready to run after the motor rewind procedure.Without our colleagues at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), we would never have managed to prepare for the test and transport all the equipment. Jim Adams machined parts as they were designed. Scott Wilde, Andy Meiser, and Garth Johnson were instrumental in preparing the cargo container to hold all of the equipment and the turbine. Thanks also for bringing the turbine home.Lastly, we are grateful to the visionaries of the wind industry, particularly Sandy Butterfield, whose perseverance and persistence over the past decade resulted in a coveted time slot in this busy wind tunnel. Management support from Mike Robinson was also crucial in the success of this test.

Modeling of Aerodynamic Forces on the Wind Turbine Blades

“…This two bladed wind turbine of 10 m diameter and of airfoil section of S809 has been tested in the wind tunnel of NASA at Ames [14]. These experiments contain a database for analysis of aerodynamic properties of wind turbine.…”

Influence of Control on the Pitch Damping of a Floating Wind Turbine

“…One possibility for increasing the barge-pitch damping through active pitch-to-stall control is to tailor the airfoildata coefficients so that rotor thrust increases more with wind speed in Region 3 than what resulted with the existing airfoils. Experimental data from NREL's Phase VI Unsteady Aerodynamics Experiment (UAE), 13 which tested a passive stall-regulated wind turbine in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center, showed a nearly steady increase in rotor thrust with wind speed from cut-in to cut-out. This would translate into a nearly constant steady-state thrust sensitivity to wind speed, T V ∂ ∂ , across all wind speeds for the UAE wind turbine.…”

Simulation of transient gusts on the NREL 5 MW wind turbine using the URANS solver THETA

“…Soerensen and Hansen (1998) solved the Reynoldsaveraged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and applied the Menter shear stress transport (SST) k − ω turbulence model to a full-scale wind turbine. In 2002 the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) performed the Unsteady Aerodynamic Experiment (UAE) (Hand et al, 2001), which has long been the reference for several CFD computations. For example, Johansen et al (2002) presented a detached eddy simulation (DES) on the NREL UAE phase VI blade to demonstrate the capabilities of predicting flow separation.…”