Analysis of leading edge erosion effects on turbulent flow over airfoils

Akshay Koodly Ravishankara, Huseyin Özdemir and Edwin van der Weide

Renewable Energy, 2021, vol. 172, issue C, 765-779

Abstract: The surface of wind turbine blades are prone to degradation due to exposure to the elements. Rain, hail, insects are among the many causes of turbine blade degradation or erosion. Surface degradation of the wind turbine blades leads to a reduction in the aerodynamic performance, resulting in power losses. The effect of surface degradation is studied by modeling the turbine blade as a rough surface. Surface roughness can be positive (insects or other foreign objects) or negative (erosion, delamination). The individual roughness elements are however very small and it is not always feasible to study the actual degraded surface. Thus various roughness models have been proposed in the literature which eliminate the need to accurately model the degraded surface by representing erosion with a virtual surface and modeling the effect of erosion on the flow quantities near the eroded surface. In this study, the reduction in performance of airfoils due to leading edge roughness is quantified. Different roughness models are investigated and evaluated against theoretical models. Additionally, the effect of roughness on different integral boundary layer quantities like displacement thickness, momentum thickness and skin friction are presented.

Keywords: Leading edge erosion; Roughness modeling; RANS; SU2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014812100375X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:172:y:2021:i:c:p:765-779

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2021.03.021

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().