Course Overview

• Introduction to rotary wing aerodynamics. Applications in aircraft, propulsion, fans and wind turbines.
• The introduction of actuator surfaces.
• 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.
• The relationship between force field, vorticity field, pressure field of an airfoil and an actuator disc.
• Blade element momentum method, Tip correction methods. Correction for finite number of blades and heavily loaded rotors.
• Aerodynamic characteristics of airfoils for rotor application.
• Wind turbine rotor blade design.
• Yawed flow, Autogiro, helicopter rotor in forward flight.
• Vorticity based method.
• Vortex line methods. Vortex wake structure. Frozen and free wake, vortex core modelling.
• Unsteady aerodynamics at rotor scale.
• Unsteady aerodynamics at airfoil scale and dynamic stall effects.
• Aeroacoustics and rotor aeroacoustics.
• Vertical axis wind turbine rotor aerodynamics.
• Airborne wind energy.
• Wind farm aerodynamics. Rotor-wake interaction. Single and multiple wakes. Effects upon loads and performance.

Main Goal

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.

Skills To Be Gained

To be updated.

Practical Notes

To be updated.