Effects of wind turbine rotor positioning on tornado induced loads
Abstract
This study investigates the loads induced by a large-scale tornado simulation on a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) to assess the influence of three-dimensional flows with respect to the HAWT position. The loads were analyzed under two rotor operational conditions, idling and parked, at five radial distances. Subsequently, experimental validation of the numerical code HIW-TUR was conducted by evaluating the induced moments for various yaw and pitch angles. The experimental results demonstrated that the bending moment was the most important in terms of magnitude and variation with respect to the HAWT position. Furthermore, The HIW-TUR code accurately identified the magnitude and HAWT configuration that leads to the maximum mean moments induced by the tornado. It was proved that by varying the yaw angle of the rotor plane and blade orientation to parallel to the tornado tangential component, the overall loads could be reduced to the minimum values.