Numerical simulation of the flow around oscillating wind turbine airfoils Part 1: Forced oscillating airfoil

Abstract

This is the first part of a two part paper on flow around vibrating wind turbineairfoils. In this part 1, the unsteady, incompressible, viscous and laminar flowover a forced oscillating airfoil is computed using a method based on acommercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code. Beforehand, theNavier-Stokes equations are solved for the unsteady flow around a NACA0012 airfoil at a fixed 20° incidence and the low Reynolds numbers of 103and 104 to check the reliability of the CFD computations. Then the flowaround a pitching airfoil is simulated for prescribed values of the reducedfrequency. The Navier-Stokes equations are expressed in ALE formulationand solved with moving mesh. The effects of the discretization schemeand the moving mesh technique are investigated. The hysteresis loops ofthe dynamic stall phenomenon are highlighted.