Analysis of the aerodynamic characteristics of nrel s823 and du 06-w-200 airfoils at various reynolds numbers using qblade

Abstract

Most of the fixed pitched wind turbines, which are used for the small-scale power generation, typically, are operated at low Reynolds numbers where the aerodynamic performance of an airfoil can change considerably with Reynolds number. So that the study of aerodynamics performance of airfoil at various low Reynolds number is much important. In this paper, such an attempt has been made through simulating the selected airfoils, says National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) S823 and DU 06-W-200, using QBlade open-source software. QBlade software habits the double multiple stream tube (DMS) algorithms for evaluating the performance of vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) blade element method (BEM) for the evaluation of horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs). The viscous-inviscid coupled panel process code XFOIL is integrated within the graphical user interface (GUI) of QBlade for the calculation of lift and drag coefficient of an airfoil at any angle of attack (AoA). The simulation is carried out at various Reynolds numbers in the range of 1 × 105 to 3 × 105 for both selected airfoil and compared to each other. The results show that for every applied Reynolds number, S823 airfoil obtains higher lift coefficient up to 10° AoA after that DU 06-W-200 airfoil exhibits higher values and also the same pattern followed for lift-to-drag ratio. Finally, the simulation results are compared with the identified experimental data for validation purpose, and that displays good agreement between the QBlade simulation result and experimental data.