Investigation of the benefits of unsteady blowing actuation on a 2D wind turbine blade

This paper investigates the benefit of unsteady blowing actuation over a two-dimensional (2D) airfoil specially designed for wind turbine applications. The experiments were carried out in Syracuse University’s anechoic wind tunnel, both with and without large-scale unsteadiness in the free stream generated by a 2D cylinder upstream of the airfoil. By analyzing both surface pressure through wavelet analysis and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) velocity field measurements, we found a drastic change in the flow physics and the aerodynamic loading on the airfoil between steady and unsteady free-stream conditions. When there was no large-scale unsteadiness introduced in the flow, under open-loop flow control conditions with unsteady blowing, the leading-edge separation was delayed and the maximum lift coefficient was increased. For the cases where large-scale unsteadiness was introduced into the flow, the experiments showed that both open-loop and closed-loop control cases were capable of reducing load fluctuations by a measurable amount. However, only the closed-loop control case that utilized dynamic surface pressure information from the airfoil suction side near the leading edge was capable of consistently mitigating the fluctuating load.