Development of an aerodynamic model for a flexible kite for wind power generation

In this bachelor's thesis an Aerodynamic an Structural model have been developed for the study of a exible kite. With this model, a designer is able to obtain a preliminary view of the forces acting on a kite as well as the nal shape of the kite after the equilibrium of forces is reached. The project can be clearly divided in two parts: The Aerodynamic model and the Structural model. The Aerodynamic model is a 3D Vortex lattice method. The Biot-Savart law was used to get the ow- eld around a nite straight vortex line. With the boundary condition that the air cannot ow through the kite, the strength of the ow- eld induced by the vortices can be computed. Also the Kutta-Joukowski theorem is used to calculate the force produced by each vortex segment. Once the forces are known, the lift and the induced drag are also computed. This forces will be used later, together with the structural model, in order to obtain the equilibrium position of the kite. The Structural model is obtained applying two conditions: each segment that compose the kite should be in equilibrium, i.e. the forces and the moments acting on each segment should be equal to zero. The other condition is that the two tethers come together in one point. It is indispensable that all the segments in which the kite is divided have the same length, to ensure the convergence. All of these condition will be explain better in section 3. A remarkable assumption is that the sti ness of the kite is not taken into account. Both the Aerodynamic model and the Structural one have been developed using Matlab ®.Ingeniería Aeroespacia