AERODYNAMIC ANALYSES OF THICK WIND TURBINE AIRFOILS FOR HIGH REYNOLDS NUMBERS

Ezgi Orbay Akcengiz, Ezgi Aslan and Nilay Sezer Uzol

In this study, Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations of flow around thick have been performed. Thick airfoils are generally preferred in wind turbine blades for structural and aerodynamic performances. High Reynolds flows around thick airfoils are one of the challenging problems in wind turbine blade design due to turbulent, separated and complex flow field characteristics. In the CFD analyses, both 2-D RANS simulation approaches on structured computational grids are considered. Grid sensitivity study is also performed and presented in this paper.

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