FYFD

Tag: wind turbine

  • Turbine Blade Separation

    [original media no longer available]

    Maintaining consistent air flow along the contours of an object is key to aerodynamic efficiency. When air flow separates or forms a recirculation zone, the drag increases and efficiency drops. On wind turbine blades, flow often separates on the root end of the blade near its attachment point. This behavior is apparent in the video above at 0:34. The tufts in the foreground on the turning blade flap and flutter with no clear pattern because the air flow has separated from the surface. In the subsequent clip, a line of vortex generators has been attached near the leading edge of the blade. These structures–also commonly seen on airplanes–trail vortices behind them, mixing the flow and generating a turbulent boundary layer which is better able to resist flow separation. The effect on the flow is clear from the tufts, most of which now point in a consistent direction with little to no fluttering, indicating that the air flow has remained attached. (Video credit: Smart Blade Gmbh/Technische Universität Berlin)

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  • Tip Vortex

    Tip Vortex

    Smoke released from the end of a test blade shows the helical pattern of a tip vortex from a horizontal-axis wind turbine. Like airplane wings, wind turbine blades generate a vortex in their wake, and the vortices from each blade can interact downstream as seen in this video. These intricate wakes complicate wind turbine placement for wind farms. A turbine located downstream of one of its fellows not only has a decreased power output but also has higher fatigue loads than the upstream neighbor. In other words, the downstream turbine produces less power and will wear out sooner. Researchers visualize, measure, and simulate turbine wakes and their interactions to find ways of maximizing the wind power generated. (Photo credit: National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

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    Measuring Wind Turbines with Snowfall

    One of the challenges in large-scale wind energy is that operating wind turbines do not behave exactly as predicted by simulation or wind tunnel experiments. To determine where our models and small-scale experiments are lacking, it’s useful to make measurements using a full-scale working turbine, but making quantitative measurements in such a large-scale, uncontrolled environment is very difficult. Here researchers have used natural snowfall as seeding particles for flow visualization. The regular gaps in the flow are vortices shed from the tip of the passing turbine blades. With a searchlight illuminating a 36 m x 36 m slice of the flow behind a wind turbine, the engineers performed particle image velocimetry, obtaining velocity measurements in that region that could then be correlated to the wind turbine’s power output. Such in situ measurements will help researchers improve wind turbine performance. (Video credit: J. Hong et al.)

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    Separation and Stall

    This flow visualization of a pitching wind turbine blade demonstrates why lift and drag can change so drastically with angle of attack. When the angle the blade makes with the freestream is small, flow stays attached around the top and bottom surfaces of the blade. At large (positive or negative) angles of attack, the flow separates from the turbine blade, beginning at the trailing edge and moving forward as the angle of attack increases. The separated flow appears as a region of recirculation and turbulence. This is the same mechanism responsible for stall in aircraft. (Submitted by Bobby E)

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    Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

    Conventional wind turbines feature horizontal axis propellers which must be placed far apart from one another to avoid wake interference. Researchers have found that using vertical axis wind turbines specially arranged to utilize the wake of one turbine to improve the efficiency of its neighbor can produce far more energy per square meter of land. The inspiration for this arrangement came from fish, which also derive benefits from the drafting that occurs in their schools. #

  • Wind Turbines and Weather

    Wind Turbines and Weather

    A new study reports that wind turbine farms may be changing local surface temperatures, resulting in warmer temperatures at night and cooler temperatures during the day. The result is neither surprising nor new; the motion of the propellers increases the turbulence downstream of the turbines. Turbulent flow mixes much better than laminar flow, so air from above the ground is getting mixed into surface air in the wakes. At night, the air next to the ground cools more quickly than air higher up, so the mixing of higher, warmer air results in localized warmer air on the ground. Orange farmers use this effect when they put out fans at night to keep their crops from freezing. #