Instituto Superior Técnico

Offshore Wind Energy

Design of a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine with

an FFA-W2-152 foil profile

Filipe Sundfeld Veloso – 92303

2022/23
Introduction
The objective of the present report is to describe the process followed to design a
Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) with a constant foil geometry, at a given operating
condition, with three implementation steps: inviscid flow design, real flow design, and real flow
analysis. Each step will be described later with greater detail.
Still in this section, the problem will be formulated, in terms of geometry and conditions
assumed. Additionally, the first assumptions made will be presented and justified. Then, each
following section will be dedicated to describing the remaining steps of this project: the design
considering inviscid flow, followed by re-designing taking into account some viscous effects, and,
finally, compute operation at different conditions.
The project was developed in Excel. Parts one and two were done in two different sheets,
while part three required more sheets to be performed, and the results were plotted on an additional
sheet.
Project conditions and airfoil geometry
The case 29 was assigned for this project. It consists in using the section foil model FFA-
W2-152, a rotor with three blades and a diameter of 126 meters, to consider the design wind
velocity as 11.3 m/s, hence the fluid being air, and, finally, a design Tip-Speed Ratio (TSR) of 5.0.
The data regarding the airfoil was obtained on Fénix, where two .DAT files provided the
airfoil’s coordinates and their lift and drag coefficient (Cl and Cd), respectively. The foil geometry
can be observed in Figure 1, while the evolution of the two lifts in terms of the foil’s angle of
attack is presented in Figure 2.

0.40 FFA-W2-152 foil geometry

0.30
0.20
0.10
y/c

0.00
-0.10
-0.20
-0.30
-0.40
0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 x/c 0.80 1.00 1.20 1.40
Figure 1: FFA-W-152 section.
 1.400 Coefficients vs Angle of Attack 0.014
1.200 0.012
1.000 0.010
0.800 0.008
0.600 Cl 0.006
0.400 Cd 0.004
0.200 0.002
0.000 0.000
-4.000 -2.000 0.000 2.000 4.000 6.000 8.000 10.000

Figure 2: Cl and Cd vs angle of attack for the given foil.

A scheme of the turbine blade’s discretization is shown in Figure 3. The portion of the
radius that will indeed have a turbine is only 80% of the total radius, as exemplified by professor
João Baltazar. The colored points represent the discretizes portion of the radius. To increase the
resolution of calculations closer to the tip, the spacing between points decreases as the radius
increases. It was chosen to use 18 total sections within each blade. The final point accounts for
0.995R, and not the full size of the radius. That’s only to avoid a few expressions being divided
by zero at certain points of this project.

Figure 3: Blade’s discretization.

Part I – Inviscid design
This section is dedicated for the first approach to design the operating conditions of the
HAWT, where the viscous effects of the foil are neglected, therefore, Cd = 0.

The first approach was to inspect the variation of the Cl/Cd ratio for a given angle of attack
(AoA). From what it can be clearly observed, the optimal lift-to-drag ratio occurs at,
approximately, 6º. This value will be used as the optimal one for the initial design condition,
because performing a polynomial interpolation would not increase the precision significantly.

Table 1: Foil's Cl/Cd relation for several AoA's.

AoA (º) Cl Cd Cl/Cd

15.000 1.500 0.030 50
11.000 1.350 0.020 67.5
10.000 1.300 0.017 76.47059
9.000 1.290 0.014 92.14286
8.000 1.200 0.012 104.3478
7.000 1.100 0.009 122.2222
6.000 1.000 0.006 166.6667
5.000 0.900 0.006 163.6364
4.000 0.780 0.005 156
3.000 0.650 0.005 130
2.000 0.550 0.005 110
1.000 0.430 0.005 86
0.000 0.300 0.006 54.54545
-1.000 0.200 0.006 33.33333
-2.000 0.050 0.006 8.333333

The following step is to apply Glauert’s Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory to obtain
the turbine’s optimal loading, where the viscous forces play no influence. All the equations solved
are such that, in the end of calculations, there will be a tailored distribution of the pitch angle ψ
and the chord distribution of the blade. The parameters that must be changed are the induction
factor and the rotational induction factor, a and a’, respectively.
The equation that governs the induction factor depends on the “local” tip speed ratio (x) and is:
1−𝑎
𝑥 = (4𝑎 − 1) ∗ √
1 − 3𝑎
After manipulation of the expression above, the local TSR can be present in the following
way:
−16𝑎3 + 24𝑎2 − 9𝑎 + 1
𝑥2 =
1 − 3𝑎
This equation could be solved in several ways. Since x is a constant value for each blade
section, it will act as a constant, so it is necessary to find the roots of the 3rd degree equation in
terms of the induction factor. With a powerful programing language such as matlab, this could be
performed with a simple line of code, but since this project was developed using only Excel, an
alternative was needed. The solution was to put each side of the equation on a different cell and,
for a certain value of a, compute the absolute difference between these two cells. In this way, the
Solver tool was applied to minimize the sum of these absolute errors by changing only the values
of a at each radial position. The only restriction was on the induction factor range, which has to be
in the interval of ]0.25,1/3[ on the Glauert solution.
This implementation was successful, and the results of the design parameters can be seen
in the following figures.
Radial distribution of foil's design angles
50.00
Beta
40.00 Beta_i
Pitch
Angle (degrees)

30.00

20.00

10.00

0.00
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
r/R
Figure 4: Radial distribution of foil's design angles.

Radial distribution of induction factors

0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2 a
0.15 a'
0.1
0.05
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
r/R
Figure 5: Radial distribution of induction factors (inviscid).

0.25
Chord to radius distribution

0.2

0.15
c/R

0.1

0.05

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
r/R
Figure 6: Chord to radius distribution.
 700 Lift distribution and total approximation
600 lift dist.

Total lift < 20kN

500

Lift (N/m)
400

300

200

100

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
r/R
Figure 7: Lift distribution and total approximation.

These will be the conditions considering an inviscid air flow. Using the power expression
and a numerical integration process, it is possible to compute the theoretical power generated by
this three-blade turbine. Moreover, it is possible to compute its power coefficient Cp.
𝑅 𝑅
𝜕𝑄
𝑑𝑟 = ∫ 4πρUΩ2 (1 − 𝑎)𝑎′𝑟 3 𝑘𝑑𝑟
𝑃= ∫ Ω
0 𝜕𝑟 0
𝑃
𝐶𝑝 =
1/2𝜌𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑈 3 𝜋𝑅 2
The total power is 6.35MW and Cp is equal to 55%.

Part II – Real Flow Design

In this section, the drag coefficient is considered in the analysis. Therefore, the ratio Cd/Cl
is different from 0, and their ratio, ε, plays an important role on the blade’s performance.
This means that Glauert solution is no longer valid, and new expressions for a and a’
must be used, that take into account the load function F and also the tip loss factor, k. Since βi
determines the value of a in this case but is simultaneously calculated from the induction factors
on the velocity triangle, the solution can only be obtained through iteration. As suggested by
professor João Baltazar, the solution consists in minimizing the difference between βi obtained
through both expressions. To implement this process, the absolute difference between all the
values were summed up, and the solver’s goal is to minimize this sum by changing βi values,
which will than change a and a’ to change this difference to calculate a new value for the
difference. Since this design is still for optimal conditions, the objective is still to limit the
induction factor between the maximum and minimum values of 1/3 and 1/4, respectively.
The solution obtained in this section determines the final geometry of the blade, which
will be fixed on the next section of the report, to study the effect of altering operating conditions
on performance. Important to remember that the tip loss factor decreases the load function as the
analysis is closer to the tip, where it reaches zero.
𝑎 ℱ cos 𝛽𝑖 𝑎′ ℱ 𝑍𝑐𝐶
= (1 + 𝜀 tan 𝛽𝑖 ); = (1 − 𝜀 cot 𝛽𝑖 ); ℱ ≡ 𝑟 𝐿 = ℱ𝐺𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑒𝑟𝑡 𝑘;
1−𝑎 8𝜋 𝑘 sin2 𝛽𝑖 1+𝑎′ 8𝜋 𝑘 cos 𝛽𝑖
 Real blade angles
40
Real beta_i Blade picth
30 Alpha

Angle (degree)
20

10

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6
r/R 0.8 1 1.2
Figure 8: Real blade angles.

Radial distribution of the induction factors

0.35

0.3

0.25

0.2 a a'
0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2

Figure 9: Radial distribution of the induction factors (real).

Tip loss factor

1.2

0.8

0.6
k

0.4 TSR = 5
0.2

0
0 0.2 0.4 r/R 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Figure 10: Tip loss factor for part II.

Real flow design c/R

0.25

0.2

0.15
c/R

0.1

0.05

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
r/R
Figure 11: Real flow chord distribution.
 Now, the chord tends to zero at the end of the blade – which makes sense, since the blade
has a finite length. Following the same method to compute the power as presented in the last
section, both power and Cp were computed in order to investigate the viscous effects on power
generation. Now the power generation was 4.4MW, with a coefficient of performance equals to
38%, meaning that approximately 30% of the possible electricity generation is being lost due to
viscous effects, but also because of the influence of the tip loss factor.

Part III – Real Flow Analysis

This section investigates the operating parameters and performance of the wind turbine in
different conditions from the design one. This is done primarily by changing the TSR. Since the
Pitch angle is a design parameter, it will be a fixed value throughout the turbine’s operation, and
in order to remain constant while conditions change, the angle of attack must vary, which will
consequently vary Cl and Cd, affecting overall power production performance.
The values of both induction factors (the “normal” and the rotational ones) will now
depend on the number of blades, and chord, which are fixed for the problem’s design geometry,
and also on Cl and ε, which depend on the angle of attack. The two expressions are shown
below:
𝑎 𝑍𝑐𝐶𝐿 cos 𝛽𝑖
= (1 + 𝜀 tan 𝛽𝑖 )
1−𝑎 8𝜋 𝑘 𝑟 sin2 𝛽𝑖
𝑎′ 𝑍𝑐𝐶𝐿
= (1 − 𝜀 cot 𝛽𝑖 )
1 + 𝑎′ 8𝜋 𝑘 𝑟 cos 𝛽𝑖
Therefore, once again the value of 𝛽𝑖 needs to be iterated, and the same algorithm is
applied. The only difference is that now, since the operating conditions are not design conditions,
there will be no limitations on the values of the induction factor a. If it’s value goes beyond 1/3,
the physical meaning is not the same as for the design considerations. That is because the BEM
theory cannot predict the empirical behavior that is observed in real conditions, as it can be
exemplified for the calculation of CT seen in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Empirical results of blade's induction factor.

 Several cases were analyzed, for TSR of 3, 5, 5.5, 7, 9, and 10. The behavior of altering
the TSR can start to be analyzed by verifying the changes in both the induction factor and the
rotational induction factor, a and a’, respectively. Figure 13 shows the variation of a for all the
TSR’s, while Figure 14 shows the same variation, but now for a’.
Induction factor vs radial position
0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1
TSR = 5 TSR = 5.5 TSR = 7 TSR = 9 TSR = 3 TSR = 10
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2

Figure 13: Induction factor vs radial position (part III).

Rotational induction factor vs radial position

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2

TSR = 5 TSR = 5.5 TSR = 7 TSR = 9 TSR = 10 TSR = 3

Figure 14: Rotational induction factor vs radial position.

The induction factor extrapolates de optimal values for higher TSR than design conditions,
while for lower TSR it tends to be lower than the Glauert solution’s lowest value acceptable.
Meanwhile, the rotational induction factor tends to zero in all cases being analyzed. Moreover, the
tip loss factor is also presenting a stable, similar to the expected pattern (Figure 15), where for
higher TSR’s it decreases more steeply and closer to the blade’s tip. Since all the results presents
a good behavior, it is expected that the calculations of the power, which expression is shown on a
previous section, also follows the expected results. To obtain the total power, the rectangular
method of numerical integration was performed again, and results can be consulted in Figure 16.
 Tip Loss Factor for several TSR's
1.2

1 TSR

0.8

0.6

0.4
TSR = 5 Série2
0.2 Série3 Série4
TSR = 10 TSR = 3
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2

Figure 15: Tip loss factor for different TSRs.

Power and Cp of the HAWT at different TSR

0.5 6000
0.45
5000
0.4
Power coefficient

0.35
4000
0.3

Power [kW]
0.25 3000
0.2 Cp
2000
0.15 P
0.1
1000
0.05
0 0
0 5 10 15
TSR
Figure 16: Power and Cp at different TSR.

The power production for each TSR displayed above has an interesting pattern of variation.
For the TSR range between 5 and 7, the power coefficient does not vary dramatically. Instead, it
seems that the turbine is capable of extracting a similar amount of energy at different setups of
angle of attack, at the defined wind velocity of the problem. The angle of attack on this interval is
on the range of 6º for TSR = 5 and between 2 and 3º for TSR = 7. The wind velocity is high enough
to generate high Reynolds number on these conditions, as it can be seen in Figure 17.

10 Radial variation of Reynolds number

Reynolds Number (*10^6)

TSR = 5
8
TSR = 7
.DAT file
6

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6
r/R 0.8 1 1.2
Figure 17: Radial variation of Re.
 According to the manufacturer, this range of Reynolds number (approximately 3 million)
is the setup that enables the most stable operation of the blade, which contribute to explain the
behavior seen above. Moreover, they are designed to operate at high L/D ratios, which take place
when the angle of attack is 6º (and consequently Cl = 1.0), as it can be seen in Figure 18 below,
generated by the manufacturer [1].

Figure 18: L/D vs Cl provided by FFA [1].

This figure also assists in understanding that, when the angle of attack increases slightly,
then the L/D ratio decreases with great intensity, creating an unnecessary load at the turbine’s
structure that is hard to avoid, given the fact that any change in the turbine’s settings needs some
minutes to occur, while wind speed variations can occur within seconds. This means that, for the
problems design requirements, the turbine is operating in stall conditions.
Knowing this, the results of Figure X make even more sense, because the range of TSR’s
take place to the left side of the L/D curve on Figure X, meaning that it is operating in the most
stable and most efficient range of the curve.
Since the angle of attack increases as TSR decreases, if the wind velocity decreases from
the 11.3m/s, which is its design condition, the L/D ratio will decrease fast. An alternative to avoid
this phenomenon would be to offset the design angle of attack to a lower value, either by increasing
the TSR for that given velocity or by choosing a lower design wind speed. In this way, a sudden
change in wind speed would not lead to turbine stall.

Conclusions
The objective of this assignment was to apply the Glauert theory for HWT to design a
certain turbine to operate at a given condition. The application of expressions didn’t present any
severe inconsistency, which reflects a good application of the methods. Excel performed all the
calculations fast and with high precision. The least precise results were the ones obtained with
numerical integration, but that’s mostly due to the application of a low-resolution method, which
can be further improved. Still, since all calculations used the same algorithm, the results are
comparable between each other.
After analyzing the power coefficient for different TSR’s and its behavior, it was
necessary to investigate further the geometry of the foil used. By consulting a report from the
designers of the model, it was possible to obtain a new graph (Fig. 18) that made clear the fact
that the design conditions are close to stall. Since a sudden change in the TSR can move the
operation point to a region of high load instability, mostly if the TSR decreases, offsetting the
design conditions to a higher TSR would have a positive effect on the HAWTs long-term
performance and structural health.

References
[1] Bjorck, A. (1990). COORDINATES AND CALCULATIONS FOR THE FFA-Wl-xxx, FFA-
W2-xxx AND FFA-W3-xxx SERIES OF AIRFOILS FOR HORIZONTAL AXIS WIND TURBINES
(FFA TN 1990-15). FLYGTEKNISKA FORSOKSANSTALTEN.