Simulation of Aerodynamic Divergence and Flutter on Wind Turbines using ANSYS-CFX

The recent development of large wind turbines poses new challenges with regard to understanding the mechanisms surrounding unsteady flow-structure interaction. The larger and more flexible blades imply risks from an aeroelastic point of view and urge the need to properly understand and model these phenomena. Due to limited experimental data available in this field, Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques provide an invaluable alternative to identify and model aerodynamic and aeroelastic phenomena around the wind blades. The study is part of the coupling between aerodynamic and elastic models of the commercial code CFX with ANSYS, respectively. In this paper we are modeling the aeroelastic divergence. This article presents the the studies aiming at modeling divergence. In this article the results of the divergence modeling using ANSYSCFX will be presented and compared with results from “Jennifer Heeg” [13]. The study is realized on the NACA0012 airfoil for which experimental data are available in literature. The ANSYS workbench is used for the fluid structure interaction to simulate the divergence phenomenon which is a structural response imposed by aerodynamic loads due to transient fluid flow.