Numerical simulation of aerodynamic load control for blade airfoil of wind turbine using gurney flap

Numerical simulation was undertaken to determine the effects of aerodynamic load control with Gurney flap on blade airfoil S902 of wind turbine at chord Reynolds number of 1.5×10⁶.The flow over S902 airfoil with and without gurney flap were simulated by solving Navier-Stokes equation. The comparison between the simulated data without Gurney flap and the experiment data had been carried out in order to verify the validity of the computational model. Numerical simulation over an S902 airfoil with Gurney flap shows that the aerodynamic performance of the airfoil is strongly influenced by the height, inclined angle and location of the gurney flap. It is observed that the lift and drag are increased with the increase of the height of the Gurney flap for the same location, and then the increasing amount of lift and drag for the same location and differenf angle are decreased with decrease of the inclined angle of Gurney flap. With the Gurney flap moving from the trailing edge towards the leading edge direction the effect of increasing lift is deteriorated gradually, so these is an effective region that lift can increase. When the gurney flap locates on upper surface, the lift is decreased for all angles of attack, and the drag is increased remarkably.