The Eighth Asia-Pacific Conference on Wind Engineering,

December 1014, 2013, Chennai, India

Experimental analysis on a wind turbine model with a 3-D

span wise projection for passive flow control
T. A. Sundaravadivel1, Dr. S. Nadaraja Pillai2, Dr. C. Senthil Kumar3
1Doctoral Student, Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai, TN,
India, aerovelu@yahoo.com
2
Department of Aeronautical Engineering, J. J. College of Engineering & Technology, Tiruchirapalli, TN,
India, aeropillai@gmail.com
3
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University, chennai, TN, India,
cskumar@mitindia.edu
ABSTRACT
The experimental investigation is carried out on a 1:25 scaled NREL Phase VI wind turbine model.
Here an attempt is made to quantify the electrical power which is obtained by rotation of a wind turbine rotor
coupled with a 12V DC motor and power resistor decade box circuit. The wind turbine model which is used for
the study is a three bladed one with rotor diameter of 10.058 m in full scale and 30 centimeters in model scale. In
the present work an attempt is made to study the effectiveness of a passive flow control device (PFC) in the
electrical power characteristics of a wind turbine rotor. Experiments are conducted by installing the PFC on
various span wise locations (say r/R = 0.9, 0.8 and 0.7). The blades were then tested dynamically in a wind
tunnel for 3 different speeds say 4m/s, 6m/s and 8m/s, and displayed a significant improvement in power output.
A maximum of 7.16% increase in the power is obtained by installing the PFC device at r/R = 0.7. This power
increase can be attributed to additional lift and reduced drag caused by introducing the passive flow control
device.

Keywords: S 809 Airfoil, spanwise 3 dimensional projection, electrical power.

Nomenclature

NREL National Renewable Energy Laboratory

R
Rotor Radius
r
Span wise Distance
1. Introduction
Wind turbines interact with the wind, capturing a part of its kinetic energy and
convert it in to usable energy. From the theory of Incompressible flow over finite aircraft
wings , when the incoming wind is flown over the blade, there is a quantifiable amount of
span wise flow, called as third dimensional flow which is other than axial and lateral
component. Due to this span wise flow, vortices are created near the wing tip. The total drag
on a three-dimensional wing/blade basically consists of two parts:1) viscous and pressure drag
which is due to 2-D nature of the flow, and 2) induced drag due to the 3-D nature of the flow.
The induced drag stems from the lift because the trailing vortex system behind the wing
induces velocities perpendicular to the free stream direction (downwash). The local inviscid
lift forces act perpendicular to the relative velocity, so the induced velocities give rise to

Proc. of the 8th Asia-Pacific Conference on Wind Engineering Nagesh R. Iyer, Prem Krishna, S. Selvi Rajan and P. Harikrishna (eds)
c 2013 APCWE-VIII. All rights reserved. Published by Research Publishing, Singapore. ISBN: 978-981-07-8011-1
Copyright 
doi:10.3850/978-981-07-8012-8 277

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forces in the direction of the incoming wind. This is what is called induced drag. Since the
downwash is proportional to the lift, the induced drag scales with the square of the lift. The
strength of the induced drag can be countered by a boundary layer fence is used for passive
flow control. The purpose of adding a wing fence to the rotor blade design is to decrease the
induced drag from the blade by changing the downwash distribution (Ref.7). It is extensively
used for non-rotating applications such as air planes and sail planes. In the present work, an
attempt is made to install this boundary layer fence in different span wise stations of a 1:25
scale model of NREL phase VI wind turbine and to study the electrical power output for each
case.

Figure 1 :- Circuit diagram of dynamic testing system

2. Methodology
The experiments are conducted in the low speed wind tunnel of test section size
3ft4ft, situated at Aerospace Department of M.I.T, Anna University. Initially as the first
case, the scaled down model of the conventional NREL rotor is exposed to 3 different air
speeds (say 4m/s, 6m/s and 8 m/s) and as a result, the rotor started rotating and the motor
function as a generator thereby electricity is generated. In the cases II,III and IV, the passive
flow control devices are installed in different span wise locations , r/R = 0.9, 0.8 and 0.7
respectively and the electrical power output is measured and compared with the conventional
NREL rotor results.
The passive flow control devices are devices which are perpendicular to the span of
the blade, and its height is calculated by considering the displacement thickness over the
surface of airfoil. The boundary layer thickness is calculated at the location where the vortex
generator is installed, for an optimum velocity of 15m/s by taking sea level density and

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viscosity into account. Based on the boundary layer thickness the Vortex generator height is
determined. The model of NREL blade with vortex generator installed is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 2:- Model of NREL Blade used for the study with span wise projection.
In the Present work, an attempt is made to study the effectiveness of installing a
boundary layer fence installed in the various span wise locations of an NREL Phase VI wind
turbine blade. The NREL blades have a linear taper and a nonlinear twist with S809 aero foil
sections. The wind turbine blade is modeled as per the coordinates given in ref.5. The full
scale rotor diameter is 10.058 m and the model scale rotor diameter is 30 centimeters. The
wind turbine rotor and the hub are attached to a motor which is mounted on a tower of length
35 centimeters. A 12 V DC motor is installed in the nacelle and the rotor is assembled in the
motor shaft. The output of the motor is connected in a circuit as shown in figure 1 to measure
the electrical output power. The resistances are varied from 0 to 4000 ohms insteps of 400
ohms using the decade resistance box and the corresponding current and voltages are
measured. Two multimeters are installed in the circuit to measure the voltage and current
respectively. The model fabricated for the present study is shown in figure 3. The wind
turbine rotational speed is measured with a sensor connected to a digital display. The sensor is
set to sense a metal needle attached to the hub of the turbine rotor. The photograph of the
wind turbine blade with the PFC devices installed is shown in the figure 4.

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Figure 3:- Photograph of the model fabricated for the study

Figure 4:- Photograph of the blades with PFC devices installed

3. Results and Discussion
Four different blade designs were tested during the course of the dynamic testing
portion of this study. The blade belong to the case I does not include any passive device, and
the resulting average power output as shown in table 1 was used as a reference. The wind
turbine rotor with PFC device installed at r/R=0.9(90% of the blade span)-case II has
produced average output power increase of 0.5 to 1.5%. The blade set belong to case III, has

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PFC installed at r/R = 0.8(80% of the blade span) has shown a maximum power increase of
3.25% and the blade set belong to case IV yielded a power increase of 7.16% as shown in the
table. Atypical plot of output power vs resistances for 4m/s wind speed is shown in figure 4.
In the plot it is clear that the blades with PFC installed at r/R = 0.7 produce an increased
power output comparatively.
Voltage
(v)
Case I
Case II
Case III
Case IV

Conventional
Blade
Blade with PFC
at 90%
Blade with PFC
at 80%
Blade with PFC
at 70%

Current
(A)

Power
(W)

RPM

1.03

0.003

0.00309

%
Power
284.2 Increase

1.02

0.00305

0.00311

285.7

0.67%

1.04

0.00303 0.003151

286.3

1.94%

1.06

0.00314 0.003328

289.2

7.16%

Table 1: Comparison of electrical power and rotor RPM for 4m/s and 400 Resistance

Figure : Plot of Resistances vs output power for 4m/s wind speed

4. Conclusions
Further testing is necessary to determine if a measurable pressure decrease within the wing-tip
vortex has occurred. This testing could be performed using a static airfoil with and without the
PFC device. Further research would be necessary in order to test the validity of increases in
efficiency due to the addition of PFC on full-scale wind turbines.
5. References
1. Shane Merchant.J wind tunnel analysis of a wind turbine with winglets 2010 ECTC ASME Proceedings,
March 25-27, 2010, Tulsa, OK
2. Design and Experimental Results for the S809 Airfoil NREL/SR-440-6918

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3. Johansen, J.; Sorensen, N.; Aerodynamic Investigation of Winglets on Wind turbine blades using CFD.
Technical ReportRISO-R-1543, Denmark,EN,2006.
4. Ramsay R.R , J. M. JaniszewskaG.M., Gregorek, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Wind Tunnel
Testing of Three S809 Aileron Configurations for use on Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines
5. Yen-Pin Chen et.al.,(2009), A Study of the Aerodynamic Behavior of A NREL Phase VI Wind Turbine Using
the CFD MethodologyMasters Thesis, Wright State University.
6. Walter P. Wolfe Stuart S. Ochs, AIAA 97- 0973 CFD Calculations of S809Aerodynamic Characteristics
7. Williams, D.; Reeder, F.; Maple, C., Solfelt, A. Modelling, Simulation, and Flight Tests for a T-38 Talon with Wing Fences.
Journal of Aircraft, 2010, vol. 47.

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