The origins of a wind turbine tip vortex

The tip vortex of a wind turbine rotor blade originates as a result of a complex distribution of vorticity along the blade tip thickness. While the tip vortex evolution was extensively studied previously in other work, the mechanism of the initiation of the tip vorticity in a 3D rotating environment is still somewhat obscured due to lack of...

Experimental and numerical study of radial flow and its contribution to wake development of a HAWT

The scope of this work was to investigate radial flow component for a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine in axial flow conditions and to assess its impact on the turbine operation. This was done by means of Particle Image Velocimetry and numerical simulation with a 3D unsteady potential-flow panel model. A direct comparison between the numerical and...