Impact of large-scale free-stream turbulence on a pitching airfoil

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of large-scale turbulence on the aerodynamic characteristics of a pitching wind turbine blade at Reynolds number 135 000, whose cross-section is a NACA0012 airfoil with constant chord length. Large-eddy simulations at reduced frequencies, kred = 0.05 and 0.1, were validated against reference data from the literature. An efficient method capable of generating synthetic large-scale turbulence at the inlet was applied by using two streamwise integral length scales Lx = 1c and 1.5c, which represent energetic turbulence eddies at the height where the wind turbine operates. For kred = 0.1, the change in the maximum lift coefficient at the dynamic stall angle near the maximum angle of attack is on average 20 % lower and during the downstroke it is on average 22 % lower, compared with the smooth inflow. A higher reduced frequency (kred = 0.2) apparently does not further change the lift, drag and moment coefficients, and the inflow turbulence disordered leading-edge vortices. The turbulent shear stress and the phase-averaged dispersive shear stress in the wake are of the same magnitude, but with negative and positive signs, respectively, suggesting that the large-scale phase-averaged fluctuations transfer momentum in the opposite direction compared with the turbulent fluctuations, reducing the drag on the suction-side flow, and subsequently increasing the averaged lift coefficient. This demonstrates the critical importance of the large-scale non-turbulent unsteadiness in the wake of a pitching wing.