Design Optimization of a Multi-Megawatt Wind Turbine Blade with the NPU-MWA Airfoil Family

Jianhua Xu, Zhonghua Han, Xiaochao Yan and Wenping Song
Additional contact information
Jianhua Xu: Institute of Aerodynamic and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization, National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Aerodynamic Design and Research, School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Zhonghua Han: Institute of Aerodynamic and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization, National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Aerodynamic Design and Research, School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Xiaochao Yan: Institute of Aerodynamic and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization, National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Aerodynamic Design and Research, School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Wenping Song: Institute of Aerodynamic and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization, National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Aerodynamic Design and Research, School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 17, 1-24

Abstract: A new airfoil family, called NPU-MWA (Northwestern Polytechnical University Multi-megawatt Wind-turbine A-series) airfoils, was designed to improve both aerodynamic and structural performance, with the outboard airfoils being designed at high design lift coefficient and high Reynolds number, and the inboard airfoils being designed as flat-back airfoils. This article aims to design a multi-megawatt wind turbine blade in order to demonstrate the advantages of the NPU-MWA airfoils in improving wind energy capturing and structural weight reduction. The distributions of chord length and twist angle for a 5 MW wind turbine blade are optimized by a Kriging surrogate model-based optimizer, with aerodynamic performance being evaluated by blade element-momentum theory. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations solver was used to validate the improvement in aerodynamic performance. Results show that compared with an existing NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) 5 MW blade, the maximum power coefficient of the optimized NPU 5 MW blade is larger, and the chord lengths at all span-wise sections are dramatically smaller, resulting in a significant structural weight reduction (9%). It is shown that the NPU-MWA airfoils feature excellent aerodynamic and structural performance for the design of multi-megawatt wind turbine blades.

Keywords: aerodynamic design optimization; wind turbine; airfoil; flat-back airfoil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/17/3330/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/17/3330/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:17:p:3330-:d:262015

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().