Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 4-2-2021

Abstract

With the increasing demand on clean and sustainable source of electricity, wind energy represents attractive solution, and since that the performance of the turbine depends mainly on the blade airfoil aerodynamic characteristics, therefore improving Airfoil aerodynamic characteristics remain hot issue for research worldwide. The present paper proposes a new design of Multi-Element airfoil based on the symmetric airfoil NACA0021 geometry. The proposed Multi-Element airfoil design consists of two sub-airfoils with different overlap/gap, and orientation within the boundaries of the NACA0021 airfoil. The geometry generation method is explained and the aerodynamic performance of the proposed type is investigated using CFD. Nine (9) configurations of the multi-element design were tested in the current study. The results show superior performance for all proposed shapes, compared with the original airfoil. The glide ratio of the best configuration is 50% higher than that of the original airfoil and occurs at higher angles of attack. The results show that the wider the gap between the two sub airfoils, the higher the angle of attack at separation. With the significantly improved performance of the proposed multi-element airfoil shape over base NACA0021 (i.e. 60% increase in peak Cl, and 35% increase in peak glide ratio) it is highly susceptible that it will produce higher power conversion efficiency for wind turbine.

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