Trajectories for detached wind turbine blades

摘要

Computer simulated and measured trajectories of a scaled blade, as detached from a wind turbine, have been compared for a model-blade (0.6 m long), released from a custom-made blade-throwing machine. The simulations are based on a wing strip theory, using static airfoil data in combination with a dynamic stall model. The measured movement of the detached model-blade was found to be in good agreement with the simulations, although throwing distances in most cases tend to be longer in the simulations than in the experiments. The dynamic stall model mainly affects the 'throwing width' parallel to the wind direction and has only a negligible affect on the absolute throwing distance.