Airborne Wind Energy Airfoils

Design of Pareto-optimal airfoils for rigid wing systems in the field of Airborne Wind Energy

Master thesis (2018)

Authors

E.J. Kroon Aerospace Engineering

Contributors

G.L. De Oliveira Andrade (supervisor 1)
Faculty
Aerospace Engineering
Copyright: © 2018 Erik Kroon
Airborne Wind Energy Airfoils High lift Pareto-optimal Rigid wing
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

24-10-2018

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Abstract

A new field of study has arisen within Wind Energy known as ‘Airborne Wind Energy’ (AWE). Although the concept of AWE has been around for a long time, there has been little development in this field until recently. This thesis adds to this development.

The focus lies on airfoil design in order to improve existing AWE systems and accelerate the field’s growth. To this end the main objectives of this thesis are to identify the goals these airfoils have to meet and to optimise their design with these goals in mind.

A literature study was used to identify the goals and a genetic algorithm was used for the optimisation process. The results from the final designs have been compared to existing airfoils with similar criteria and have been proven to perform better for the identified goals.