Numerical study of pitching wind turbine airfoil

The original incentive for developing the software package was the identification of the unsteady wake structure generation, and the prediction of aerodynamic performances of an airfoil. In fact, one of the key features of Laplace´s Equation is the property that allows the equation governing the flow field to be converted from a 3D problem throughout the field to a 2D problem for finding the potential on the surface. The aim of this work is to evaluate the aerodynamic performances of wind turbine airfoils NACA 23015 and NACA 4412 in pitching motion. Therefore, two dimensional inviscid flow codes is developed based on the Unsteady Panel Method to predict the oscillatory flow field and the aerodynamic propriety of the oscillating airfoil for different amplitude of oscillation and reduced frequency respectively.