Wind turbines play an increasingly imporant role in the energy production of our time. In order to optimize the performance of wind turbine blades, this thesis work aims at assessing the possibility of using panel methods for gradient based optimization of the aerodynamics of wind turbine blades. Specifically, the method employed has used Dirichlet boundary condition, a fixed wake for optimization and a free wake model for validation. The panel method developed has been validated against the MIRAS software and CFD results. The results of the optimization are compared against the Glauert optimum blade. The blade is parameterized using NACA profiles and the twist and chord are used as design
variables. Two optimizations have been performed: an unconstrained optimization, which has shown to take advantage of limitations of the panel method model; a second optimization is performed applying a thrust constraint and with tighter bounds on the design variables, which is capable of achieving realistic results. The main conclusion is that realistic blade designs can be achieved using a fixed wake panel method for aerodynamic optimization, although ultimately the performance of these designs should be assessed using
higher fidelity models.