Wind Turbine Blade Design for Subscale Testing

Abstract

Two different inverse design approaches are proposed for developing wind turbine blades for sub-scale wake testing. In the first approach, dimensionless circulation is matched for full scale and sub-scale wind turbine blades for equal shed vorticity in the wake. In the second approach, the normalized normal and tangential force distributions are matched for large scale and small scale wind turbine blades, as these forces determine the wake dynamics and stability. The two approaches are applied for the same target full scale turbine blade, and the shape of the blades are compared. The results show that the two approaches have been successfully implemented, and the designed blades are able to produce the target circulation and target normal and tangential force distributions.