The aerodynamics of a wind turbine is governed by the flow around the rotor, where the prediction of air loads on rotor blades in different operational conditions and its relation to rotor structural dynamics is one of the most important challenges in wind turbine rotor blade design. Because of the unsteady flow field around wind turbine blades, prediction of aerodynamic loads with high level of accuracy is difficult and increases the uncertainty of load calculations. A free vortex wake method, based on the potential, invis-cid and irrotational flow, is developed to study the aerodynamic loads. Since it is based on the potential, inviscid and irrotational flow, it cannot be used to predict viscous phenomena such as drag and boundary layer separation. Therefore it must be coupled to the tabulated airfoil data to take the viscosity effects into account. The results are compared with the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) method and the GENUVP code (see also the acknowledgments).
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