46th Symposium of Applied Aerodynamics PolytechOrlans, 28-30 March 2011

STEREO PIV EXPERIMENTS ON HORIZONTAL AXIS WIND TURBINE ROTOR MODEL: 46 APPLIED AERODYNAMICS SYMPOSIUM ORLANS, FRANCE, 28-30 MARCH 2011 (1) (1,2) (1) (1) Bura Akay , Daniel Micallef , Carlos S. Ferreira , Gerard J.W. van Bussel DUWIND, Delft University of Technology, Kluyverweg 1, 2629HS Delft, The Netherlands, b.akay@tudelft.nl (2) University of Malta, Faculty of Eng., Department of Mechanical Eng., Msida, MSD 2080 Malta.
ABSTRACT-This paper sets out to describe the measurements and computations to construct three components of velocity field around the blade. The primary aim of the measurements was to gain insight into the physics of the flow field produced by a horizontal axis wind turbine-HAWT blade. Stereo Particle Image Velocimetry experiments were performed on a two-bladed HAWT rotor in the open jet facility. Three components of velocity on 2D planar measurement planes were obtained from the defined field of views. The three components of velocity at the different radial positions are analysed in the present paper by comparing the experimental results with the panel code results. Besides having an insight about the flow field around the blade section, this comparison enables to improve and validate the panel code. The measurements show very well agreement with the computations except at the tip trailing edge region which is expected. The key observation of this work is inboard motion of the tip vortex. Also, clear outward motion of the radial flow on the suction side of the inboard sections of the blade is observed in the measurements and computations.
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INTRODUCTION Several methods have been used to clearly define the flow field around a horizontal axis wind turbine-HAWT. However, while some of the attempts were insufficient to predict the characteristics, some of them did give explicit characterizations of the boundary layer state at the blade surface but only enabled illation regarding the flow field topology above the blade. Schreck et al. [1] performed a study which involved combining the surface pressure data statistics and the 3D computational fluid dynamics. Although the aim was to link the boundary layer measurements with the computations, very limited information was given in the paper about the contribution of the flow field above the boundary layer. Instead, the work was focused on boundary layer separation and the shear layer impingement. There are many contributions to the boundary layer analysis. The effect of rotation on the boundary layer was studied by analysing some pressure tap ([1], [2]) and hot wire [3] measurements, and also by means of boundary layer theoretical methods [4], [5]. Some of these attempts mentioned the need of 3D correction for the 2D airfoil data which is used in aerodynamic models to simulate HAWT. Some studies [6] on these correction models showed the need for reliable experimental data to validate the models, and thus improve the defects of the models. Experiments in the literature provided limited data quality due to the applied measurement

techniques. However, stereo Particle Image Velocimetry-PIV is a non-intrusive method which can measure the three-components of instantaneous velocity vectors on a 2D plane. Whale et al. [7] was one of the first users of PIV in the field of wind energy to assess the usability of PIV to investigate full-scale wind turbine's aerodynamic features. There are a few other researchers [8], [9] used PIV to look into the aerodynamics of wind turbine. The present work aims to contribute to the three-dimensional investigation of the flow field produced by a HAWT. This is done by means of stereo PIV which can give quantitative information about the flow field. The main limitation of the measurements occurred at the region very close to the hub. Because of the higher thickness of the blade at the root, there is undesirable shadow which makes illumination of the measurement area difficult. Some preliminary tests are also showed that there is no blockage effect on the measurements. Experiment was simulated by a potential flow panel method to compare the three components of velocity distribution at different radial positions. The following sections contain the description of the rotor model, stereo PIV experimental set-up, comparison of the experimental results with the panel method results and conclusion. 1. METHODOLOGY The experimental work was performed at Open

Jet Facility-OJF (see Fig. 1) by means of Stereo PIV to measure the flow field around a 2 bladed rotor which has 1m radius.

Measurement parameters are tabulated in Tab. 1. Velocity vectors were obtained using DAVIS software from 75 couples of images. With multi-pass refinement and 50% window overlapping, the final vector spacing is 1x1 mm (maximum chord is 200mm). The probability density distribution of the particles displacements does not show any peak locking. An uncertainty from statistical point of view is also evaluated for the acquired number of images and for the performed averaging. Based on turbulence intensity (TI), N statistically independent images and the confidence level (Z/2), the relative error for mean velocity is written as [10]; =( Z/2.TI)/N

Figure 1 Schematic representation of OJF. The rotor model used in the experiment represents a horizontal axis, 2 bladed wind turbine model. The blade model has a 0.0643m chord at the tip and 0.1079m and a 16 twist at the root. The Stereo PIV technique was applied to obtain the three components of velocity on the 2D planar fields of view around the blade. 16 mega pixel cameras with f 180mm lenses and double cavity pulsed Nd:YAG laser were fixed on a computerized traverse system to move together. Synchronization between the laser pulses and the position of the rotating blade was achieved for the designed experiment.

For the present measurements, the calculated relative error in the mean velocity is 0.72% for 98% confidence level. Table 1 Tip speed ratio, Rotational speed, Measured thrust coefficient. TSR 7 RPM 400 TC, measured 0.837

Experimental turbine was modelled by using a potential flow panel method with a free wake model. The detail explanation of the potential flow solver can be found in [9].

2. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The velocities represented under this section are the velocities outside of the boundary layer. This is because the velocities in the boundary layer was not measured in the experiments. Inviscid assumption of the flow was made in the potential flow solver as well. In this section, three components of velocity are presented at three radial positions as shown in Fig. 3. Station 1 is at 310mm away from the rotor axis and located at the maximum chord length. Station 2 is at 610mm and station 3 is at 1000mm which is the tip of the blade.

Figure 2 Measurement set-up. The measurement set-up is presented in Fig. 2. 30 planes were measured along the span of the blade at every 3cm. At each radial location, one measurement was performed at the suction side and one at the pressure side of the blade. This provides to have the full picture around the blade. At each measurement positions 75 phase-locked image couple were recorded for pressure and suction sides.

Figure 3 Radial positions of the presented velocity distributions.

Fig. 4-6 show averaged induced axial, radial and tangential velocity contours normalized by free-stream velocity, 5. 98 m/s. The inflow is in the positive y direction. The inflow velocity is subtracted from the velocity fields and in this way the induced velocity fields are obtained. Induced velocity vectors are also presented on the contour plots. While the first row of the figures shows the stereo PIV results, second row presents the panel method results. To clarify the coordinate system, it is worthwhile to address the directions of the flow. The axial flow is in the direction of downstream which is +y, the radial flow is in the direction from root to tip which is +x, and finally the tangential flow is in the direction from leading edge to trailing edge which is +z. In Fig. 4, a very good match between stereo PIV and panel code results is observed in the induced axial velocity distribution except at the tip position. Although at the leading edge similar flow behaviour is observed both in measurements and computations, this similarity in the flow field does not continue in the trailing edge of the blade at the tip. While measurements has a positive axial velocity distribution at the trailing edge of the blade section, computations estimates a negative velocity distribution. These discrepancy between the measurement and the computation can be because of the roll-up mechanism of the tip vortex which cannot be predicted correctly by computation. This results may also explain the inboard motion of the tip vortices which can be observed in the raw PIV images (see App. Fig. 7). The radial flow direction is clearly perceptible at the stations close to root and at the tip by positive and negative velocity distributions, respectively, on the suction side of the blade sections (see Fig. 5). While in the measurements, an inboard radial velocity is observed on the suction side and trailing edge region of the tip, the computations do not show this strong inboard radial velocity at the trailing edge of the blade section. This can be explained with the same reason mentioned above. The discrepancy observed in this chord-wise measurement results was also indicated in the span-wise measurement results presented in [9]. The computations match well with the measurements when tangential velocity distributions are compared at stations 1 and 2 (see Fig. 6). Again because of the same reason at the tip, there is a mismatch at the trailing edge of the blade section.

3. CONCLUSION This paper presents stereo PIV measurements with panel method computations at some radial positions on a HAWT blade. The results show the three components of velocity distribution above the boundary layer. The comparisons of the measurements with the potential flow unsteady panel model represent very well agreement at the inboard and mid-section of the blade. Stereo PIV measurements show inboard motion of the tip vortex. However, further investigation has to be performed for this tendency of the tip vortex. It is also clearly visible that there is an outward motion of radial flow at the inboard and midsection of the blade and an inward radial flow motion at the tip of the blade. To be able to have a clear and complete insight about the flow field around the a HAWT blade, other radial positions will be analysed as well. 4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research project is supported by VESTAS. The authors acknowledge the support of B. Geurts during the experiment.

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Figure 4 Contours and vectors of induced axial velocity at three stations. First row: stereo PIV; second row: panel method. The inflow is in +y direction.

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Figure 5 Contours and vectors of induced radial velocity at three stations. First row: stereo PIV; second row: panel method.

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Figure 6 Contours and vectors of induced tangential velocity at three stations. First row: stereo PIV; second row: panel method.

5. REFERENCES

1. S.J. Schreck & M. Robinson (2002). Rotational augmentation of horizontal axis wind turbine blade aerodynamic response. AIAA 0029, 70-82. 2. S.J. Schreck (2007). Rotationally Augmented Flow Structures and Time Varying Loads on Turbine Blades. AIAA 627. 3. D. Hu, O. Hua, and Z. Du (2006). A study on stall-delay for horizontal axis wind turbine. Renewable Energy, vol. 31, pp. 821836. 4. Z. Du and M. Selig (2000). The effect of rotation on the boundary layer of a wind turbine blade. Renewable Energy, vol. 20, pp. 167181. 5. H. Dumitrescu and V. Cardos (2003). Rotational effects on the boundary-layer flow in wind turbines. Tech. rep., AIAA Journal-Technical Notes. 6. S. Breton, F. Coton, and G. Moe (2008). A study on rotational effects and different stall delay models using a prescribed wake vortex scheme and NREL phase VI experiment data. Wind Energy, vol. 11, pp. 459482. 7. J. Whale, K. H. Papadopoulos, C. G. Anderson, C. G. Helmis and D. J. Skyner (1996). A study of the near wake structure of a wind turbine comparing measurements from laboratory and fullscale experiments. Solar Energy, 56, 621633. 8. I. Grant and P. Parkin (2000). A DPIV study of the trailing vortex elements from the blades of a horizontal axis wind turbine in yaw. Experiments in Fluids, 28, 368-376. 9. F. Massouh and I. Dobrev (2007). Exploration of the vortex wake behind of wind turbine rotor. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 012036, vol. 75. 9. D. Micallef, B. Akay, T. Sant, C. S. Ferreira and G.W.J. van Bussel (2011). Experimental and numerical study of radial flow and its contribution to wake development of a HAWT. EWEC 2011. 10. H.H. Bruun (1995). Hot-Wire Anemometry, Principle and signal analysis. Oxford University press. Chapter 12.

APPENDIX

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Figure 7 Raw PIV images at the tip. (a) azimuth angle, =95

(b) =97 (c) =99.