Wind Turbine Airfoils considering Surface Roughness Effects

표면거칠기 둔감도를 고려한 풍력발전기용 익형 개발

Most airfoils for wind turbines commercially available have been developed for aircrafts, which are operated at high Reynolds numbers. However, Reynolds numbers of wind turbines are very low compared to those of aircrafts. In other to improve wind turbine performances, airfoils for the use of wind turbine shall be designed such as S-series airfoils developed by NREL in America. The authors have designed new airfoils for wind turbines considering designated operation conditions of wind turbines and even local wind resources in Korea. The designed airfoils are characterized by improved roughness insensitivities compared to other airfoils such as S814 and S820. The developed KWA005-240 and KWA009-127 are for root and tip sections of a wind turbine blade, respectively. Although the results show much improved performances against NACA airfoils, performance data of post-stall regulation loses some accuracies due to the characteristics of the simulation tool of XFOIL. Therefore, wind tunnel experiments are required for more accurate evaluation of the designed airfoils. Currently, the experiments has been completed and the data analysis works are going on now. The final results obtained from the experiments will be published soon.