Performance investigation and energy production of a novel horizontal axis wind turbine with winglet

This study mainly focuses on improving the aerodynamic performance, analysing the turbulence effect and structural response of the horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) blade for energy production. The baseline blade geometry is modified using a winglet at the blade's tip to enhance aerodynamic efficiency. Adding a winglet to the blade tip improves the power performance by 4.2% to 25% at different wind speeds. This paper aims to investigate the turbulence effect on a HAWT blade without and with a winglet at the tip using numerical analysis. The results found that the overall performance of the wind turbine can be influenced depending upon the turbulence intensity. The torque generation is reduced by 11% and 8.54% for a baseline blade and blade with winglet, respectively, if turbulent intensity is increased by 10 times (from 3% to 30%). Furthermore, adding a winglet at the tip of the blade increases the weight of the wind turbine system and aeroelastic instability. The one-way fluid-structure interaction approach is used to study the aeroelastic effect. Three cases of varying tip speed ratios and two material properties are assessed for HAWT blades without and with winglet. Further, the results show that the total deformation and von Mises stress are within the permissible limits for both the materials studied.