Study of swept and curved blade influences on HAWT performance

Swept and curved blades may change aerodynamic behaviors in turbomachinery. This configuration might improve performance of wind turbines. It is interesting and necessary to find out how it could be influenced qualitatively or quantitatively by using swept and curved blades in HAWT. First, this study is based on the antetype wind turbine. The commercial CFD software FLUENT was utilized to get the three-dimensional numerical simulation and to analyze the flow field. The comparison between the results of calculation and experimental data proves that the numerical model used in this paper is accurate enough to study how swept and curved blades influence the wind turbine performance. Second, a dozen models of wind turbines differentiate from each other in swept and curved blades which were designed by changing the stacking line and they were then simulated numerically. Based on the comparisons between the performance and the flow field of the antetype wind turbine and the twelve models, the influences of swept and curved blades on the performance of wind turbines and on ways of influencing are obtained.