Investigations of active boundary layer control using DDES

Abstract

The root area of a wind turbine rotor is usually constructed by very thick airfoils with a relative thickness of more than 35%. An airfoil at that thickness is characterized with strong flow separation. To solve this issue, vortex generators can be used as an active control in order to stabilize the airflow and improve the aerodynamic performance, consequently. Boundary layer control however, investigated employing numerical techniques, strongly depend on the employed method as well as the mesh especially due to a weak vortex conservation in the RANS model. Using the method of Delayed detached eddy simulation (DDES) the solution can benefit from effort-efficient boundary layer modeling as well as LES vortex resolving apart from the surface. The present studies aims to investigate suitable numerical approach mesh dependencies in comparison to experimental data, for application to thick airfoil in future studies.