Development of Thick Airfoils for Wind Turbines

One important element in the aerodynamic design of wind turbines is the use of specially tailored airfoils to increase the ratio of energy capture and reduce the cost of energy. This work is focused on the design of thick airfoils for wind turbines by using numerical optimization. A hybrid scheme is proposed in which genetic and gradient-based algorithms are combined together to improve the accuracy and the reliability of the design. First, the requirements and the constraints for this class of airfoils are described; then, the hybrid approach is presented. The final part of this work is dedicated to illustrate a numerical example regarding the design of a new thick airfoil. The results are discussed and compared to existing airfoils.