Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


Thesis_Jiale Li Draft 7_Final.pdf (8.49 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

IMPROVE ENERGY PRODUCTION BY USING HIGH EFFICIENCY SMART WIND TURBINE BLADE

Li, Jiale
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8213-4755
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522420577009512

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Civil Engineering.
Wind energy is considered as one of the most promising green energy sources for its renewable, sustainable, and worldwide availability. Traditional wind farms usually contain hundreds of wind turbines at locations with high quality of wind speed. However, there are more and more distributed wind turbines installed nowadays. Distributed wind turbines are installed at or near the point of end-use for the purposes of meeting on-site energy demand and are sometimes installed at locations with unfavorable wind quality. Increasing the power efficiency to take advantage of both low and high wind speed is of great importance for the wind energy industry. Optimal designs of the wind turbine blade have been the subject of extensive research, and significant progress has been accomplished in the past years. This study reviewed previous research to lay down a knowledge base for investigating innovative wind turbine blades. Two innovative wind turbine blades, extensible blade and bio-inspired blade are introduced in this study. The extensible `smart’ blade will be extended at low wind speed to harvest more wind energy; on the other hand, it will be retracted to its original shape when the wind speed is above the rated wind speed to protect the blade from damages by high wind loads. An established aerodynamic model is implemented in this paper to evaluate and compare the power output of extensible blades versus a baseline conventional blade. The bio-inspired blade is inspired from the leading-edge tubercles on the humpback whale flippers can improve the hydrodynamic performance of humpback whale. This research investigates the potential of bio-inspired blade technology to improve the performance in increasing wind energy output for the small horizontal axis wind turbine. The high lift low Reynolds number airfoil S1223 was chosen in this research, and the wind tunnel test was conducted in the Control & Energy Systems Center at Case Western Reserve University. The result shows that the blade with a shorter wavelength and larger wavelength of tubercles has better performance in increasing the maximum power coefficient. Additionally, the tubercles can delay the stall significantly comparing to the reference blade. Overall, this research provides insights into the wind resource of different terrain types in Cleveland area and introduces details about two innovative wind turbine blades, which could increase the energy production of the wind turbines.
Xiong Yu (Committee Chair)
Xiangwu Zeng (Committee Member)
David Matthiesen (Committee Member)
Yue Li (Committee Member)
Mingguo Hong (Committee Member)
194 p.
Civil Engineering; Mechanical Engineering

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Li, J. (2018). IMPROVE ENERGY PRODUCTION BY USING HIGH EFFICIENCY SMART WIND TURBINE BLADE [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522420577009512

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Li, Jiale. IMPROVE ENERGY PRODUCTION BY USING HIGH EFFICIENCY SMART WIND TURBINE BLADE. 2018. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522420577009512.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Li, Jiale. "IMPROVE ENERGY PRODUCTION BY USING HIGH EFFICIENCY SMART WIND TURBINE BLADE." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1522420577009512

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1522420577009512
711
© 2018, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.