Title: Modelling of aerodynamic flutter on a NACA 4412 airfoil with application to wind turbine blades

Authors: Drishtysingh Ramdenee; Adrian Ilinca; Sorin Ion Minea; Ibrahim Hussein

Addresses: Universite du Quebec a Rimouski, 300 allee des Ursulines, Rimouski G5l 3A1, Canada; Institut technologique de maintenance industrielle, Sept-Îles, Canada ' Universite du Quebec a Rimouski, 300 allee des Ursulines, Rimouski G5l 3A1, Canada; Institut technologique de maintenance industrielle, Sept-Îles, Canada ' Universite du Quebec a Rimouski, 300 allee des Ursulines, Rimouski G5l 3A1, Canada; Institut technologique de maintenance industrielle, Sept-Îles, Canada ' TechnoCentre Éolien, 70 Rue Bolduc, Gaspé, QC, G4X 1G2, Canada

Abstract: The study of aeroelastic phenomena on Wind Turbines (WTs) has become a very important issue when it comes to safety and economic considerations, as WTs tend towards gigantism and flexibility. At the Wind Energy Research Laboratory (WERL), several studies and papers have been conducted and published, all focusing on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD model) approaches to model and simulate different aeroelastic phenomena. Despite the very interesting results obtained, CFD is very costly and is difficult to use directly for control purposes, due to the consequent computational time. This paper describes a complementary lumped system approach to CFD to model flutter phenomenon. This model is based on a Matlab-Simulink model that integrates turbulence characteristics as well as characteristics of aerodynamic physics. From this model, we elaborate on flutter eigenmodes and eigenvalues in an aim to apply control strategies and relate the ANSYS-based CFD modelling to the lumped system.

Keywords: aerodynamic flutter; aeroelasticity; wind turbines; vibration; flutter modelling; simulation; CFD; computational fluid dynamics; fluid-structure interaction; lumped model; Matlab-Simulink; CFX; ANSYS; airfoils; turbine blades; wind energy; wind power.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSPM.2013.055193

International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling, 2013 Vol.8 No.1, pp.79 - 87

Received: 21 Nov 2011
Accepted: 16 Oct 2012
Published online: 13 Sep 2013 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article