Numerical Analysis of Wind Turbine Scale Effect by Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

전산유체역학을 이용한 풍력터빈 축소효과 수치해석

Numerical analysis of wind turbine scale effect was performed by using commercial CFD code, Fluent. For the numerical analysis of wind turbine, the three dimensional Navier-Stokes solver with various turbulence models was tested. As a turbulence mode, the realizable k-e turbulence model was selected for the simulation of wind turbines. To validate the present method, performance of NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) Phase VI wind turbine model was analyzed and compared with its wind tunnel test and blind test data. Using the present method, numerical simulations for various size of wind tunnel models were carried out and characteristics were analyzed in detail. For wind tunnel test model, the size of nacelle may not be scaled down precisely because of available motor. The effect of nacelle size was also computed and analyzed though CFD simulation. The present results showed the good correlations in pre-stall region but much to be improved in post-stall region. In 2006 and 2007, the performance and the scale effect of standard wind turbine model will be tested in KARI(Korea Aerospace Research Institute) LSWT(Low Speed Wind Tunnel) and the present results will be validated with the wind tunnel data.