A wind turbine blade profile analysis code based on the singularities method

The aerodynamic characteristics of wind turbines are closely related to the geometry of their blade profiles. The innovation and the technological development of wind turbine blade profiles can be centred on two tendencies. The first is to improve the shape of the existing airfoils and the second is to design new shapes of airfoils in order to get some more ambitious aerodynamic characteristics and enhanced performance. The aim of this paper is to develop an accurate airfoil analysis lower order code, based on the singularities method, for wind turbine applications. The 2D incompressible potential flow model has been used. In the implementation of the singularities method, source-vortex distributions over the airfoil contour are used to compute the flow characteristics. The accuracy and the validity of the results have been tested using experimental data obtained from Wind Turbine Airfoil Catalogue "Riso National Laboratory, Roskilde, Denmark, August 2001" and have shown considerable agreement. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.