Unsteady Separation Control on Wind Turbine Blades Using Fluidic Oscillators

Fluidic oscillators are actuators that are essentially constituted of a flow vane with no moving parts. They are very effective in generating an oscillating velocity field, and because of their robustness and potential to meet most application requirements they have been thoroughly investigated in previous years. In this work fluidic oscillators have been embedded in an airfoil representative of the outboard sections of wind turbine blades, and subsequently tested at full-scale Reynolds numbers 2.0 . 10(6) <= Re <= 4.8 . 10(6) in the laminar wind tunnel at the University of Stuttgart. The effects of the unsteady actuation on the lift and drag strongly depend upon Re, the level of actuation, and the state of the airfoil surface. However, strong improvements have been obtained throughout the whole testing envelope, with relative lift increase spanning from a minimum of 10 to over 60% and substantial stall margin extension. In addition, employing fluidic oscillators strongly reduces the suction surface boundary-layer thickness and the unsteadiness of the mean flow velocity.