Influences of non-uniform incoming flow on the wind turbines blades forces and root bending moments (RBMs) are not fully understood. To advance our current understanding, numerical studies of a three-bladed horizontal axis wind turbine with cylinders placed in front of it to produce non-uniform flow approaching the turbine with different non-uniformity levels have been carried out to examine the variations of blade and rotor loading due to the non-uniform incoming flow. The phase-averaged predicted blade forces reveal that the blade tangential force, in-plane RBM, and power coefficient are much more sensitive to the upstream streamwise velocity variations and are much more strongly affected than the blade axial force, out-of-plane RBM, and thrust coefficient. It also shows that for non-uniform incoming flows the blade axial force to the blade tangential force ratio fluctuates significantly during one rotor revolution, resulting in large variations of the blade elastic torsion and that the total blade force (magnitude and direction) undergoes a non-linear change in the circumferential and radial directions, which will likely lead to the reduction in the turbine operational life significantly, especially for long lightweight blades of large size wind turbines. This study also shows different behaviors of the blade forces along the blade span under non-uniform upstream flows in terms of the amplitudes and standard deviations of their oscillations. For the blade tangential force, λ and σ increase monotonously along the blade span up to near the blade tip, whereas those of the blade axial force increase up to approximately 0.6 blade span and show an opposite trend behind that.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
December 2022
Research Article|
December 05 2022
On wind turbine loading induced by non-uniform approaching flow at high Reynolds numbers
M. H. B. Ahmadi
;
M. H. B. Ahmadi
a)
(Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing)
School of Computing and Engineering, University of Derby
, Derby DE22 3AW, United Kingdom
a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: m.ahmadi@derby.ac.uk
Search for other works by this author on:
Z. Yang
Z. Yang
(Project administration, Resources, Writing – review & editing)
School of Computing and Engineering, University of Derby
, Derby DE22 3AW, United Kingdom
Search for other works by this author on:
a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: m.ahmadi@derby.ac.uk
Physics of Fluids 34, 125110 (2022)
Article history
Received:
July 21 2022
Accepted:
November 08 2022
Citation
M. H. B. Ahmadi, Z. Yang; On wind turbine loading induced by non-uniform approaching flow at high Reynolds numbers. Physics of Fluids 1 December 2022; 34 (12): 125110. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0112671
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.
Sign in via your Institution
Sign in via your InstitutionPay-Per-View Access
$40.00
Citing articles via
Related Content
On loading fluctuations induced by energetic large-scale motions for horizontal axis wind turbines
Physics of Fluids (July 2022)
Extraction of RBM frequency of a (10, 0) SWNT using MATLAB
AIP Conference Proceedings (May 2018)
A Raman Map of the DWCNT RBM Region
AIP Conference Proceedings (September 2005)
Numerical analysis of the radial breathing mode of armchair and zigzag single-walled carbon nanotubes under deformation
J. Appl. Phys. (December 2006)