Course Contents Introduction to rotary wing aerodynamics. Applications in aircraft, propulsion, fans and wind turbines.
Conservation laws. Actuator disk/momentum theory. Limitations. Helicopter rotor vertical flight and windmill
brake state. Figure of merit. Wind turbine Betz optimum. Lift and drag devices
Blade elementmomentum method, Tip correction methods. Correction for finite nr. of blades and heavily
loaded rotors.
Aerodynamic characteristics of airfoils for rotor application. Aerodynamic properties of pitch and stall
controlled wind turbine. Wind turbine rotor blade design.
Vortex line methods. Vortex wake structure. Frozen and free wake, vortex core modelling.
Vortex panel methods. Advanced wake models. Acceleration potential method.
Detailed rotor near wake structure. Experimental wake velocities and wake vorticity structure.
3D effects, Stall delay. Yawed flow and dynamic inflow. Autogiro, helicopter rotor in forward flight.
Unsteady aerodynamics and dynamic stall effects. Theodorsens Theory. Effects of tower shadow and wind shear.
Aeroacoustics and rotor aeroacoustics.
Vertical axis wind turbine rotor and Voight-Schneider propeller
Effects of inflow turbulence intensity on blade loads. Near and far wake structure
Wind farm aerodynamics. Rotor-wake interaction. Single and multiple wakes. Effects upon loads and performance.
Study Goals Provide an overview of the phenomena and models present in
aerodynamics of rotors, with special emphasis in horizontal axis
wind turbine rotors. Propellers, vertical axis (crossflow) wind turbine rotors and helicopter rotors
will also be addressed, but with less detail.
"Hands on" introduction to the different computational models used nowadays to analyse the
aerodynamics of rotors.
