Aeroelastic study of wind turbine blade

In the upper latitudes, wind turbines provide an effective means to generate wind power. However, owing to the fact that wind speeds are almost half in the tropical regions, wind turbines are yet to make significant penetration in tropical countries. Even 500 kW turbines tend to be large and slender. Such structures are known to be quite flexible. It is often not necessary to stiffen them excessively owing to weight penalty which also results in other problems like increased tower thrust and higher cut in speed. In the present paper, we present results of aeroelastic studies of low speed 500 kW wind turbine being developed by the National Aerospace Laboratories custom designed for tropical regions. The airloads are estimated using in-house developed Panel Method (inviscid) and the structural deformations are computed using ANSYS. The results indicate that the power output is affected by flexibility. Depending on the wind speed, the power generated actually may increase