Journal
COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS
Volume 64, Issue 4, Pages 1133-1153Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00466-019-01697-0
Keywords
Wind turbine; Blades; Rain erosion; Sand erosion; SUPG and PSPG methods; Particle-cloud tracking model; Erosion scale-up
Funding
- Sapienza University of Rome [RG11715C81D7D03A]
- JSPS [16K13779]
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT) [26220002]
- ARO [W911NF-17-1-0046]
- Top Global University Project of Waseda University
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [16K13779] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Wind-turbine blade rain and sand erosion, over long periods of time, can degrade the aerodynamic performance and therefore the power production. Computational analysis of the erosion can help engineers have a better understanding of the maintenance and protection requirements. We present an integrated method for this class of computational analysis. The main components of the method are the streamline-upwind/Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) and pressure-stabilizing/Petrov-Galerkin (PSPG) stabilizations, a finite element particle-cloud tracking method, an erosion model based on two time scales, and the solid-extension mesh moving technique (SEMMT). The turbulent-flow nature of the analysis is handled with a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes model and SUPG/PSPG stabilization, the particle-cloud trajectories are calculated based on the computed flow field and closure models defined for the turbulent dispersion of particles, and one-way dependence is assumed between the flow and particle dynamics. Because the geometry update due to the erosion has a very long time scale compared to the fluid-particle dynamics, the update takes place in a sequence of evolution steps representing the impact of the erosion. A scale-up factor, calculated in different ways depending on the update threshold criterion, relates the erosions and particle counts in the evolution steps to those in the fluid-particle simulation. As the blade geometry evolves, the mesh is updated with the SEMMT. We present computational analysis of rain and sand erosion for a wind-turbine blade strip, including a case with actual rainfall data and experimental aerodynamic data for eroded airfoil geometries.
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