The inverse design of the wind turbine blade sections by the singularities method

The aerodynamic characteristics of wind turbines are closely related to the geometry of their blades. The innovation and the technological development of wind turbine blades can be centred on two tendencies. The first is to improve the shape of existing blades; the second is to design new shapes of blades. The aspiration in the two cases is to achieve an optimal circulation and hence enhancing some more ambitious aerodynamic characteristics. This paper presents an inverse design procedure, which can be adapted to both thin and thick wind turbine blade sections aiming to optimise the geometry for a prescribed distribution of bound vortices. A method for simulating the initial contour of the blade section is exposed, which simultaneously satisfy the aerodynamic and geometrical constraints under nominal conditions. A detailed definition of the function characterising the bound vortex distribution is presented. The inviscid velocity field and potential function distributions are obtained by the singularities method. In the design method implemented, these distributions and the circulation of bound vortices on the camber line of the blade profile, are used to rectify its camber in an iterative calculation leading to the final and optimal form of the blade section once convergence is attained. The scheme proposed has been used to design the entire blade of the wind turbine for a given span-wise distribution of bound circulation around the blade contour.