CFD Simulation of the Flow around NREL Phase VI Wind Turbine

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis advisor, Prof. Blair Perot, for his continuous interest, support and guidance during this study. I am also thankful to Prof. Matthew Lackner and Prof. Ashwin Ramasubramaniam for their advice and help. I specially wish to thank Chris Zusi for the all the support and great suggestions he gave me during my research as well as during my life in the United States. I am thankful to Kyle G. Mooney who gave a lot of help on OpenFOAM. I would also like to thank Alexander Chan and Nathaniel Develder for all the useful discussions during this research. I thank all my friends for making my stay at University of Massachusetts, Amherst happy and meaningful. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents and my fiancé e, Pei Qiu, without their love, encouragement and support I wouldn't be able to finish my work. The simulation of the turbulent and potentially separating flow around a rotating, twisted, and tapered airfoil is a challenging task for CFD simulations. This thesis describes CFD simulations of the NREL Phase VI turbine that was experimentally characterized in the 24.4m × 36.6m NREL/NASA Ames wind tunnel. All computations in this research are performed on the experimental base configuration of 0 o yaw angle, 3 o tip pitch angle, and a rotation rate of 72 rpm. The significance of specific mesh resolution regions to the accuracy of the CFD prediction is discussed. The ability of CFD to capture bulk quantities, such as the low speed shaft torque, and the detailed flow characteristics, such as the surface pressure distributions, are explored for different inlet wind speeds. Finally, the significant three-dimensionality of the boundary layer flow is demonstrated.