Author(s)

Victor Maldonado¹, Soham Gupta²

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA.
²Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA.

A low Reynolds number wind turbine blade model based on the S809 airfoil was tested in a subsonic wind tunnel to study the structural vibration of the blade under dynamic pitching maneuvers. Piezoelectric-based synthetic jet actuators were embedded inside the blade and activated with a synthetic jet momentum coefficient, C_μ of 2.30 × 10^-3. Structural vibration was quantified for a range of unsteady angles undergoing “pitch up and down” and “sinusoidal pitch” maneuvers at a Reynolds number of 5.28 × 10⁴. The blade tip deflection amplitude and frequency were acquired utilizing a pair of strain gauges mounted at the root of the model. Using active flow control vibration reduction was more effective during the pitch up portion of the blade motion cycle compared to the pitch down portion. This effect is due to dynamic stall, where a leading edge vortex is shed during the pitch up motion and contributes to higher lift compared to static angles of attack and lower lift when the blade is pitched down. Dynamic stall was measured with phase-locked stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV), where global mean flow measurements reveal a shift in location and reduction in the size of a recirculating flow structure near the suction surface of the blade during the pitch up motion compared to the pitch down.

Active Flow Control, Structural Vibration, Dynamic Stall

Maldonado, V. and Gupta, S. (2017) Active Flow Control of a Low Reynolds Number S809 Wind Turbine Blade Model under Dynamic Pitching Maneuvers. Open Journal of Fluid Dynamics, 7, 178-193. doi: 10.4236/ojfd.2017.72012.