Aerodynamic analysis and dynamic modeling of small horizontal axis wind turbine

Abstract

In wind turbine the output torque and power depends on the incoming wind speed. Due to the rapid changes in the incoming wind speed the quality of output power becomes a serious problem. Many controls are introduced in wind turbines in order to get a constant output rated power. In this research work we have focused on dynamic analysis and Pitch control of horizontal axis wind turbine. Pitch control is one of the most useful and important control that is present in all of the current wind turbine models. For dynamic analysis and pitch control, simulation techniques and experimental works were done side by side. Simulations were carried out in ADAMS software in which a wind turbine model was imported from Pro/E. The Matlab functions calculated the wind turbine blade parameters and aerodynamic forces. The aerodynamic forces were applied on wind turbine blades in ADAMS environment. Various changes were made in wind turbine blade parameters and similarly output graphs were obtained from ADAMS post-processor. On the other side a wood model of wind turbine was made and tested by applying wind on its blades. The input wind speed was sensed by the sensors and when this speed data was given to the controller it rotated the stepper motors connected with each blade of the turbine. It showed that by introducing the pitch control the power output was successfully controlled in high and low speed conditions, and as a result the overloading and outage of the wind turbine was prevented. By modeling the wind turbine in virtual environment it became very easy to design and test various wind turbine models prior to manufacture.