Numerical simulation on effect of pressure distribution of wind turbine blade with a tip vane

It is important to study the pressure distribution on the blade and in the adjacent area while searching the power augmentation theory with adding a tip vane to the wind turbine. This paper shows the CFD simulation relationship of the pressure distribution on the rotor blade and in the adjacent area, after calculating the pressure of the different chordwise and spanwise point on the blade with the tip vane-V(8.8×8) and without the tip vane under tip speed ratio λ 4.5. Combining the isobaric section figure in certain location, it can be seen that the tip vane improve the pressure difference between pressure and suction surface. The most influenced zone is found and these can further display the power augmentation theory of the wind turbine using the tip vane. The simulation calculation was based on N-S equations. 3-D, steady, implicit solver was chosen. Turbulence model was k-ω SST. Discretization scheme is SECOND ORDER UPWIND. Pressure-velocity coupling was a typical SIMPLE scheme. In the whole grid system, two-divided grid formation was adopted, that is, inner region and outer region. Inner region including rectangular solid blade and neighboring, outer region is semi-cylinder. There were together 720,000 nodes with tetra-prism unstructured mesh.