CFD Analysis and Experimental Investigation to Determine the Flow Characteristics Around NACA 4412 Airfoil Blades at Different Wind Speeds and Blade Angles

Abstract

An aerodynamically efficient blade is one of the prime necessities to extract the maximum mechanical power from a wind turbine. A number of researches are available in the literature studying blade design and configuration to improve aerodynamic characteristics of horizontal axis wind turbines. Less attention, however, has been devoted to wind turbines in terms of simultaneous optimization of blade and airfoil angles. The present study is important for the aerodynamic design and manufacturing of wind turbine blades. In this regard, various blade angles have been numerically simulated to determine the optimum blade angle. In addition to numerical analysis, experimental tests have been done to investigate NACA 4412 blade angle. As a result of this study, it was observed that blade angle in the range of 5 degrees-10 degrees showed the best performance among the tested various blade angles.