Functional design of wind turbine airfoils based on roughness sensitivity characteristics

To improve aerodynamic performance of wind turbine airfoils,the shape profile characteristic of the airfoil is investigated.Application of conformal transformation,one functional and integrated expression of wind turbine airfoils is presented.Using the boundary layer theory,the aerodynamic model with roughness of wind turbine airfoils is introduced by studying flow separation around the airfoil.Based on the shape expression and aerodynamic performance of airfoils,the function design of wind turbine airfoils is carried out that the maximum lift-drag ratio and low roughness sensitivity are designed objects.Three wind turbines airfoils with different thickness are gained which are used at tip part of blades.As an example,the aerodynamic performance of one designed airfoil with relative thickness of 15%is simulated in different conditions of clean surface,rough surface,laminar flow and turbulent flow.The comparison of aerodynamic performance between the designed airfoil and one popular NACA airfoil is completed which can verify the better performance of the designed airfoil and reliability of the designed method.