Controlling dynamic stall using vortex generators on a wind turbine airfoil

Vortex generators (VGs) have proven their capabilities in wind turbine applications to delay stall in steady flow conditions. However, their behaviour in unsteady conditions is insufficiently understood. This paper presents an experimental study that demonstrates the effect of VGs in unsteady flow, including controlling and suppressing the...

Aspects of Source-Term Modeling for Vortex-Generator Induced Flows

Vortex generators (VGs) are awidespread means of passive flowcontrol, capable of yielding significant performance improvements to lift-generating surfaces (e.g. wind-turbine blades and airplane wings), by delaying boundary-layer separation. These small vanetype structures, which are typically arranged in arrays, trigger the formation of small...

Experimental parameter study for passive vortex generators on a 30% thick airfoil

Passive vane-type vortex generators (VGs) are commonly used on wind turbine blades to mitigate the effects of flow separation. However, significant uncertainty surrounds VG design guidelines. Understanding the influence of VG parameters on airfoil performance requires a systematic approach targeting wind energy-specific airfoils. Thus, the 30...

Adjoint-based optimization of a source-term representation of vortex generators

An optimization approach is presented that can be used to find the optimal source term distribution in order to represent a high-fidelity vortex-generator (VG) induced flow field on a coarse mesh. The ap- proach employs the continuous adjoint of the problem, from which an exact sensitivity is calculated and used in combination with a trust...