Aerodynamic loads on rotor blades

​An accurate modeling of the rotor blades to predict the turbine loads allows us to design and optimize the rotor blades which consequently decrease the operating and the maintenance costs. For this purpose, a time-marching Vortex Lattice Free Wake method has been developed to study the aerodynamic loads. It is based on the potential, inviscid and irrotational flow where it is coupled to the tabulated airfoil data and a semi-empirical model to take into account the viscosity and unsteady effects, respectively. The existing in-house code includes different modules which may increase its application range to handle a broad range of operating conditions such as movement of turbine components and turbulent incoming flow. It has been validated against other codes, measurement data and wind tunnel measurements.