The effects of different roughness configurations on aerodynamic performance of wind turbine airfoil and blade

Abstract

In this research, viscous and turbulent flow is simulated numerically on an E387 airfoil as well as on a turbine blade. The main objective of this paper is to investigate various configurations of roughness to find a solution in order to mitigate roughness destructive impacts. Hence, the sand grain roughness is distributed uniformly along pressure side, suction side and both sides during the manufacturing process. Navier-Stokes equations are discretized by the finite volume method and are solved by SIMPLE algorithm in the OpenFOAM software which is open source. Results indicated that in contrast with previous studies, the roughness will be useful if it is applied on only pressure side of the airfoil. In this condition, the lift coefficient is increased to 8.62% and 1.2% compare to the airfoil with rough and smooth sides, respectively. However, in 3-D simulation, the lift coefficient of the blade with pressure surface roughness is less than smooth blade, but still its destructive impacts are much less than of both surfaces roughness and suction surface roughness. Therefore, it can be deduced that in order to reveal the influence of roughness, the simulation must be accomplished in three dimensions.