Aerodynamic shape optimization of non-straight small wind turbine blades

Small wind turbines usually operate in sub-optimal wind conditions in order to satisfy the demand where it is needed. The aerodynamic performance of small horizontal axis wind turbines highly depends on the geometry. In the present study, the geometry of wind turbine blades are optimized not only in terms of the distribution of the chord and twist angle but also with 3-dimensional stacking line. As the blade with 3-dimensional stacking line is given sweep in the plan of rotation and dihedral in the plan containing the blade and rotor axis, the common used blade element momentum method can no longer provide accurate aerodynamic performance solution. A lifting surface method with free wake model is used as the aerodynamic model in the present work. The annual energy production and the starting performance are selected as optimization objective. The starting performance is evaluated based on blade element method. The optimization of the geometry of the non-straight wind turbine blades is carried out by using a micro-genetic algorithm. Results show that the wind turbine blades with properly designed 3 dimensional stacking line can increase the annual energy production and have a better starting behavior compared with 2-dimensional-optimized blade geometries. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.