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Experimental and numerical investigation of the influence of roughness and turbulence on LUT airfoil performance

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Abstract

Vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have been widely used in urban environments, which contain dust and experience strong turbulence. However, airfoils for VAWTs in urban environments have received considerably less research attention than those for horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs). In this study, the sensitivity of a new VAWT airfoil developed at the Lanzhou University of Technology (LUT) to roughness was investigated via a wind tunnel experiment. The results show that the LUT airfoil is less sensitive to roughness at a roughness height of < 0.35 mm. Moreover, the drag bucket of the LUT airfoil decreases with increasing roughness height. Furthermore, the loads on the LUT airfoil during dynamic stall were studied at different turbulence intensities using a numerical method at a tip-speed ratio of 2. Before the stall, the turbulence intensity did not considerably affect the normal or tangential force coefficients of the LUT airfoil. However, after the stall, the normal force coefficient varied obviously at low turbulence intensity. Moreover, as the turbulence intensity increased, the normal and tangential force coefficients decreased rapidly, particularly in the downwind region of the VAWT.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of GANSU (grant 1508RJYA098), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 51766009, 51761135012, 11872248), and National Basic Research Program of China (grant 2014CB046201). The authors also thank the people who provided many good suggestions for this paper, and Northwestern Polytechnical University for providing the experimental instruments and wind tunnel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy and Power Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Shoutu Li, Congxin Yang, Qing Wang, Yin Wang & Deshun Li

  2. Gansu Provincial Technology Centre for Wind Turbines, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Shoutu Li, Congxin Yang, Qing Wang, Yin Wang & Deshun Li

  3. Key Laboratory of Fluid Machinery and Systems, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Shoutu Li, Congxin Yang, Qing Wang, Yin Wang & Deshun Li

  4. Lab of Multiple Function Towing Tank, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Ye Li & Xiaobo Zheng

  5. State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Ye Li

  6. Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Ship and Deep-Sea Exploration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Ye Li

  7. Key Laboratory of Hydrodynamics (Ministry of Education), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Ye Li

  8. Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, China

    Wenrui Hu

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  1. Shoutu Li
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  2. Ye Li
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  3. Congxin Yang
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  5. Qing Wang
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  7. Deshun Li
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  8. Wenrui Hu
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Correspondence to Ye Li or Deshun Li.

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Li, S., Li, Y., Yang, C. et al. Experimental and numerical investigation of the influence of roughness and turbulence on LUT airfoil performance. Acta Mech. Sin. 35, 1178–1190 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-019-00898-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-019-00898-3

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