Investigation of Aerodynamic Performances of NACA 0015 Wind Turbine Airfoil

Continuous rise of energy demand and need for cleaner environment emphasizes efficient conversion of energy from renewable sources. Wind energy is the most viable sources of renewable energy and it is environmentally friendly alternative energy sources. Energy extraction from wind energy is rapidly competitive to power production from other sources like coal. In this paper, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to predict the aerodynamic efficiency of wind turbine blades. A blade's aerodynamic efficiency is expressed in terms of its lift-to-drag ratio. The design and analysis of blades is one of the critical areas of wind turbine design. In this paper, a review of aerodynamics of the two dimensional NACA 0015 airfoil for vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) is attempted. The main focus of this investigation is to analyze the flow behavior around the airfoil body and to calculate the performance coefficients at velocity 10.5 m/s and angle of attack from 0° to 20°. Comparisons of the CFD results with numerical predictions from the XFOIL result and NACA report showed a good agreement.