ASSESSMENT OF OPTIMUM TIP SPEED RATIO OF WIND TURBINES

The first thing to do in wind turbine blade design is to select tip speed ratio. Generally speaking, the speed ratio depends on the profile type used and the number of blades. Various speed ratios could be chosen for different types of profiles with different number of blades. Therefore, an optimization procedure should be applied to find the best ratio since this directly affects the energy generated from the turbine and in turn the investment made. This study presents a procedure to assess the optimum speed ratios for various profile types used in practice with various numbers of blades.