Aerodynamic Benchmarking of the Deepwind Design

AbstractThe aerodynamic benchmarking for the DeepWind rotor is conducted comparing different rotor geometries and solutions and keeping the comparison as fair as possible. The objective for the benchmarking is to find the most suitable configuration in order to maximize the power production and minimize the blade solicitation and the cost of energy. Different parameters are considered for the benchmarking study. The DeepWind blade is characterized by a shape similar to the Troposkien geometry but asymmetric between the top and bottom parts: this shape is considered as a fixed parameter in the benchmarking process.The number of blades in the analysis is varied from 1 to 4. In order to keep the comparison fair among the different configurations, the solidity is kept constant and, therefore, the chord length reduced. A second comparison is conducted considering different blade profiles belonging the symmetric NACA airfoil family