• New & Renewable Energy
• /
• v.3 no.3
• /
• pp.36-44
• /
• 2007

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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.532-540
• /
• 2012

In this study, some considerations have been suggested in developing on-site techniques to evaluate the sensitization of stainless steels. Electrochemical potentiokinetic reactivation (EPR) technique is known to be a candidate tool for field applications since it enables quantitative assessment in reasonable test time, compared to oxalic etching (ditch) technique. The on-site application of the test method imposes additional restrictions on the selection of the test method (for example, minimum surface preparation requirement, insensitivity to testing temperature, etc.). The EPR and etching techniques have been compared in order to sensitization of stainless steel structures. It has been widely reported that the maximum sensitivity in the welded structure of stainless steel is shown at heat-affected zone (HAZ) than weldments with cast structure. In this work, sectioned weldments and external surfaces were investigated to reveal the degree of sensitization by the etching and the results were compared with those of EPR test. The EPR test showed little sensitivity to surface roughness and test temperature.