Advanced Aerodynamic Modeling of Vortex Generators for Wind Turbine Applications

摘要

The present work is focused on developing advanced computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models capable of capturing the micro-scale flow physics associated with passive vortex generators (VGs). When used on wind turbine blades, VGs offer several potential benefits including increased performance in low to moderate wind speeds, and also lower aero-acoustic noise levels through mitigation of blade stall effects. CFD is uniquely suited to investigate the performance of tiny VGs, given the extremely high resolution to which the airflow around the VG can be resolved. Several different CFD modeling methodologies exist to study flow patterns around VGs, ranging from directly fitting and refining structured or unstructured grids around the VG geometry, to modeling the VG as a simple source of momentum imparted to the fluid. The present article reviews common approaches, details new state-of-the-art CFD results of arrays of VGs on wind turbine blade cross sections, and also presents a basic overview of the physics associated with passive VG technology. While validation of the current modeling work is ongoing, the CFD methodologies presented here offer great potential to optimize VG geometry and configuration for wind turbine blade design.