Load alleviation through adaptive trailing edge control surfaces: ADAPWING overview

This paper gives an overview of the Danish national project ADAPWING partly sponsored by the Danish Research Council. The project objective is through numerical and experimental studies to investigate the potential of using adaptive trailing edge geometry on wind turbine blades as load alleviation. A new 2D aerodynamic model is developed to handle arbitrary camberline shapes. The 2D model is implemented in a 2D simple spring/damper code and in a 3D aeroelastic code based on modal shapes. The numerical investigations show a huge load reduction potential very dependent on time delay. To validate the numerical results, wind tunnel experiments are carried out. These tests shows load reduction potential of up to 82%.