Experiments and numerical simulations of the rotor-blade performance for a small-scale horizontal axis wind turbine

Abstract In the present work, the research is devoted to studying the aerodynamic performance of two different types of horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) blades. One is a typical type designed by the blade element momentum theory (BEMT); the other is a non-twisted type with constant chord length. The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance gain of the former by experiments as well as numerical simulations. Wind tunnel experiments were performed to measure the power coefficients of the both models. For visualization of the flow field, numerical simulations were also conducted under the operation conditions of various wind speeds. The simulations turn out to be consistent with the experimental data. Both simulation and measurement indicated that the maximum power coefficient of the BEMT-blade was increased by more than 50% as compared with the baseline-blade. Also, some other detailed discussions about the optimal design for the BEMT-blade of a small-scale HAWT system are provided in the end.