The Performance of a Flexible Flat-Bladed Wind Turbine: Numerical Approach

Flexible blades wind turbines are getting more attention nowadays because of its benefit in reducing blade loads and improving aerodynamic performance. A new passive flexible flat-bladed wind turbine inspired by the Borneo Camphor seed is proposed. In order to understand the phenomena caused by the flexible flat-bladed wind turbine design, the numerical simulation method was used. This study was conducted by using the fluid structure interaction (FSI) to predict the power performance of the 700 mm diameter flexible flat-bladed wind turbine. The performance of the inspired flexible flat-bladed wind turbine was compared with a flat plate rigid blades wind turbine. The FSI software is a strong coupling of the ANSYS Fluent and ANSYS Mechanical APDL that allows the modelling of aeroelastic properties of the wind turbine. These integrated models allow the prediction of the performance of the inspired flexible flat-bladed wind turbine. The predicted results showed that given the same solidity of the blades, the inspired wind turbine exhibits higher starting torque, higher power coefficient and faster rotational speed. The current study demonstrated the potential of the flexible flat-bladed wind turbine in reducing the cost of wind power while being competitive in terms of performance.