However, the power performance among the above mentioned parameters has a more significant role in guiding the

aerodynamic design. Wind turbine power performance before the advent of computers was normally measured in two ways: measuring data on a real site, or testing in a wind turbine. Furthermore, field monitoring can provide more realistic results but the use of complicated and robust instrumentation is required. In addition, it takes a longer time period to cover various conditions and therefore, it becomes more expensive than the wind tunnel tests. Another factor which should not be discarded is that wind tunnel tests have also some drawbacks since there are limitations on the size of the wind turbine blade that is tested inside the tunnel. As such, to minimize the effects of obstruction of air flow inside the tunnel, the wind turbine blade needs to be small enough to ensure that flow blockage is negligible. Wind turbine blades are scaled down to fit into the wind tunnel, before testing can take place. Subsequently, results of such experiments are extrapolated to larger size by using appropriate scaling laws (Ajedegba 2008, pg.55). In this report, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with the commercial Fluent software will be used. As such, this will provide a useful modeling tool for analyzing the flow over the blade profiles of a small HAWT blade.

A number of valuable advantages are achieved following a CFD approach to a fluid dynamic problem: CFD is faster and definitely cheaper. A considerable reduction of time and costs for solving the problems is offered compared to the traditional approaches. A conscious assessment of different solutions is available in the early phase of the design process, in order to fit with the requested tasks. Thus, experimental tests would be done just on few models, resulted from the CFD analysis. Full-size analysis is hard to perform for large systems, like modern wind turbines are, or for extreme thermo-flow conditions as well as narrow geometries. A CFD study is a favourable choice in these cases. A keyimportant quality of CFD are the detailed solutions allowed by the recent techniques (and computer technologies), even for time-dependent flows and complex systems. The numerical models of the physical problems have good accuracy and reliability, due again to the newest mathematical improvements of solution schemes and of turbulence models. Due to the last two advances, in most of the cases the prediction of a fluid dynamic problem does not require a dedicated powerful workstation and sometimes a personal computer might be sufficient. The numerical modelling of a fluid dynamics problem implicates first a precise reading of the physical phenomena. All the relevant features of interest should be indicated at that first step, including geometry, materials, boundary conditions, to be defined in the simplest way, but without introducing extreme errors with the hypothesis. Nevertheless, a number of simplifications is always accepted, and is inevitable in order to model properly fluid dynamics problems.

Unstructured meshes consists of arbitrarily shaped elements which do not have any regularity among them. Such type of grids are mostly used to perform finite volume and finite element calculations. The main advantage of using unstructured meshes is their ability to resolve finely around very complex geometric topologies. Such type of meshes are generally represented by triangles in 2D and tetrahedrons in 3D geometries. Since there is no repeating pattern of the elements, the connectivity information of the elements needs to be stored explicitly. This comes at some additional computational cost since extra memory is utilized in storing the mesh connectivity information. The advantage is that, algorithms exist to fill any space, no matter how complex the shape is, with an unstructured mesh. With the latest developments in the meshing algorithms, various mesh generators are equipped with advanced meshing options which give the user considerable control in generating very accurate unstructured meshes [2]. Figure 2.2 shows a cylindrical domain with typical unstructured (tetrahedral) mesh around a 3D finite cylinder. Unstructured meshes are used throughout this research so that accurate CFD calculations can be performed over the wind turbine blades which have reasonably complex geometry. Figure 2.3 shows a 3D mesh around a wind turbine rotor while Figure 2.4 shows the surface mesh consisting of triangles on one of the wind turbine blades.

Applications of CFD
CFD is useful in a wide variety of applications and here we note a few to give you an idea of its use in industry. The simulations shown below have been performed using the FLUENT software. CFD can be used to simulate the flow over a vehicle. For instance, it can be used to study the interaction of propellers or rotors with the aircraft fuselage The following figure shows the prediction of the pressure field induced by the interaction of the rotor with a helicopter fuselage in forward flight. Rotors and propellers can be represented with models of varying complexity. Fibreglass Lightweight, strong, inexpensive, good fatigue characteristics
Variety of manufacturing processes Cloth over frame Pultrusion Filament winding to produce spars

Most modern large turbines use fiberglass

Direct Numerical Simulation ofTurbulent Flows (DNS) has as objective to simulate on computer the whole range of the turbulent statistical fluctuations at all relevant physical scales. This is a formidable challenge, which grows with increasing Reynolds numbers, since the size of the smallest turbulent eddies is inversely proportional to Re3/4, the well-known Kolmogorov scale related to the turbulent dissipation. If we wish a resolution of n points per unit length of the smallest eddy, the total number of mesh points required, and the number of arithmetic operations, will scale with n3 Re9/4. As the NavierStokes equations have to be integrated in time, with a time step determined by the smallest turbulent time scales, which are proportional to Re3/4, the total computational effort for DNS simulations is proportional to Re 3 for homogeneous turbulence! Wall flows and other inhomogeneous cases, are even more expensive, since the mesh should adapt to the resolution scales of the near-wall structures. This means that increasing the Reynolds number by a factor 10, requires an increase in the computational power of at least a factor 1000, and by a factor 10 9/4 =178 for the memory requirements. Therefore, DNS simulations for realistic Reynolds numbers of the order of 105107, as found in many industrial external flows around aircrafts, cars, buildings, or internal flows in engines, pumps, compressors, turbines, etc. are out of reach for a long time, based on the current and projected computer capacities. Nevertheless, DNS is widely applied as a basic research tool to better understand the fundamental mechanisms of turbulence, with the objective to establish a database of information to be used to improve lower level approximations such as LES or turbulence models for RANS simulations (Section 2.2).

Two families of models are presently available: one family, called Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is of the same category as DNS, in that it computes directly the turbulent fluctuations in space and time, but only above a certain length scale. Below that scale, called the subgrid scale, the turbulence is modeled by semi-empirical laws. The other family, called the Reynolds Averaged NavierStokes (RANS) model, ignores the turbulent fluctuations and aims at calculating only the turbulentaveraged flow. This is currently the most widely applied approximation in the CFD practice. Since the remaining larger-scale turbulent fluctuations are directly simulated, the computational requirements on LES simulations are still very high. It can be shown that for a resolution of n points per unit length of the simulated eddies, the number of arithmetic operations will scale with n3 Re3/2 and taking into account the time integration, the total computational effort for LES simulations is proportional to Re9/4. This is significantly lower than the DNS requirements, but still excessively high for large Reynolds number applications, particularly for wall-bounded flows. A domain where LES is clearly coming close to practical industrial applications is the modeling of combustion phenomena. Since the remaining larger-scale turbulent fluctuations are directly simulated, the computational requirements on LES simulations are still very high. It can be shown that for a resolution of n points per unit length of the simulated eddies, the number of arithmetic operations will scale with n3 Re3/2 and taking into account the time

integration, the total computational effort for LES simulations is proportional to Re9/4. This is significantly lower than the DNS requirements, but still excessively high for large Reynolds number applications, particularly for wall-bounded flows. A domain where LES is clearly coming close to practical industrial applications is the modeling of combustion phenomena.

the absence of the pressure drag produced by a shock.