As one of the commenters rightly pointed out, these concepts have been used in the aircraft industry for quite some time - particularly in fixed-wing design. As I sat on a recent 737-800 flight pondering this the other day, I noticed that most of the aerodynamic device used on the wing were also used in one way or another in wind turbine blade design. Looking at the picture below, you can see: leading-edge and fowler flaps, vortex generators, spoilers, ailerons, and winglets (or tip extension).
The first aerodynamic device used in wind turbine blade design (that I am aware of) was the vortex generator. Vortex generators were brought in to delay the stall, and often used as a remedy when the power curve wasn't performing as expected. Now, we see the use of: stall-strips (very similar to spoilers) to damp out vibrations; the use of flaps for pitch control (on a concept level anyway); winglets to increase lift; zig-zag tape to increase roughness, delay ing separation; and rotating blade tips to act as an aerodynamic brake.
I'll planning on posting on each of these aerodynamic devices over the next few months, and will be posting up pictures I have taken over the last few years and reference some interesting test data to support it.
3 comments:
Thanks for devoting some of your time on these issues. I was wondering what the effect would be on yearly energy generated. How much more % kWhs would this generate in real world performance?
Wingtip fences on wind turbine blades
what have you learnt about the potential of using devices similar to wing tip fences (otherwise winglets), used on some aircraft, on wind turbines?
Both wing tips, and wing fences are used in current day turbines. Winglets are used on several Enercon blade designs, with wing fences (limiting span-wise flow) are used on the root section on some of the blades for the REpower MM turbines.
I'll add a post about this when i have time :)
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