Aerodynamic Winglet Optimization

Sren Hjort, Jesper Laursen, Peder B. Enevoldsen

Siemens Wind Power A/S, Borupvej 16, 7330 Brande, Denmark
shj@siemens.com
pe@siemens.com
laursen.jesper@siemens.com
Abstract. During the last couple of years winglets for wind turbine blades have
experienced increasing interest. Gaunaa & Johansen [2] showed that electric
power can be enhanced by winglets only due to a reduction in tip-loss effects.
As a consequence, methods that do not take azimuthal variation of the inducted
velocity field into account are not suitable for winglet evaluation. This excludes
common BEM codes as viable tools for winglet design, at least with the tip-loss
corrections presently available.
In response to this need for an applicable engineering code, an efficient free
wake vortex line method has been developed for general rotor evaluation.
Uniform axial inflow is assumed. The new methods are validated by comparison
with BEM calculations, full cfd rotor simulations and field measurements for a
Siemens multi-MW turbine.
A gradient-based aerodynamic blade optimization is then performed for a
representative windspeed and rotor rotational velocity. The target parameter is
the mechanical power coefficient. Four testcases are presented: Chord
optimization along the entire blade span, then edgewise, flapwise and combined
edge/flap-wise optimization of the outermost 2.5 radial meters of the blade.
A brief summary of results concludes the paper.
1. Introduction
In these years the wind turbine industry seems to have entered a maturing stage, and is no
longer to be considered a pioneering technology. As a consequence there has also been a shift
in focus. Earlier development has been heavily challenged by the tremendous up-scaling of
rotor size during the last 3 decades. Now, as the up-scaling has slowed down, aerodynamic
attention is increasingly directed towards model improvement and exotic features involving
complex flows not suited for computation by existing engineering aerodynamic design methods.
An example is the winglet, well known from the aircraft industry. Is it applicable to wind turbines
as well ? Can we evaluate winglets with standard aerodynamic tools ? The answer to the
second question is non-affirmative. Todays workhorse for aerodynamic wind turbine rotor
design and evaluation is the Blade-Element-Momentum (BEM) method [1]. For straight slender
blades geometrically bound to a plane BEM delivers surprisingly accurate results considering
the simplicity of the method. In contrast, for non-straight blades and/or blades not geometrically
bounded to a plane, the BEM assumptions become invalid. Examples of blade features not
accounted for by BEM include: Large cone angles, large edge- and/or flap-wise pre-deflections,
and of course winglets.
On an axis for numerical complexity (storage/cpu resources) BEM is located at the very start as
the simplest rotor induction method available. A BEM calculated rotor-evaluation takes a couple
of milli-seconds on a standard pc. At the other extreme we find full cfd rotor calculations solving
the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS), e.g [8], [9]. Such a calculation
typically runs for 24 hrs on a parallel pc-cluster with 10 nodes. In the present paper we aim at a
general induction method suitable for slender arbitrary geometry blades, but with a cycle time
for a rotor evaluation of up to a few minutes. This limit still allows rotor-design optimizations
requiring thousands of rotor evaluations to be performed within one or a few days.

Our new method should be able to handle the examples mentioned where BEM is not
applicable. Specifically for winglets it has been shown [2], [3], that the optimum rotor power
coefficient, Cp, can be enhanced by winglets, but only due to a reduction in tip-loss. Hence, it
was proven that under the actuator disc assumption, maximum power only depends on the
plane-projected area swept by the blades, whereas maximum power is insensitive to winglets
bended up- or down-wind as long as the swept area is kept constant.
This means that our search for an engineering method for arbitrary geometry blades must go
further, in terms of complexity, than the cfd actuator disc solver, since this method is based on
the assumption that the blade forces can be smeared out tangentially, transforming the rotor
into a disc. The reader is referred to [4] for an introduction to the actuator disc method.
Beyond what we consider computationally efficient reside the iterative free wake vortex-line
methods [2], [5] and actuator line method [4].
The remaining part is organized as follows: Our new model is presented in chapter 2 and
validated in chapter 3. Chapter 4 presents a series of testcases dealing primarily with winglet
evaluation and optimization. A short summary concludes the paper.
2. The model
Assuming familiarity with the concepts and methods mentioned in the introduction, our model
can be described briefly as a non-iterative free wake vortex-line method. To the authors
knowledge this method is new. It consists of a few main components, each of which being of
ancient origin. The novel part that allows the free-wake vortex-line method to be non-iterative
ensures low computational complexity: The shed vorticity is convected downstream along
streamlines found from a cfd actuator disc solution. Although not perfect, the actuator disc
solution offers a very qualified estimate for the traces of the shed vorticity used in the vortex-line
method. The components of our new induction method are presented below.
Mesher
The computational domain for the cfd actuator disc solver is 2D due to tangential periodicity. It is
discretized using a curvi-linear structured quad mesher. Essentially the method is of advancing
front type. It starts from the disc line which has been extended to the radial farfield, and works
its way advancing upstream to the inlet. Then the second block is generated starting once again
at the rotor-disc line, but advancing downstream all the way to the outlet. The 2 blocks are then
connected. An example is shown in fig.1.
CFD actuator disc solver
Just like BEM the actuator disc method uses profile coefficients to find the forces between the
blades and the fluid, but the flowfield is now calculated by solving the Navier-Stokes equations.
The forces from the blades are smeared out tangentially and applied to the system of equations
as RHS volume forcing on the momentum equations. The forcing is applied for those of the
mesh elements which are located on the disc line. The steady incompressible NS-equations in
cylindrical co-ordinates with tangential periodicity on differential form are:
Continuity:
v
(rv r )
+r x =0
r
x

(1a)

r denotes radius or radial dimension, x is the rotor axial dimension and the azimuthal
(tangential) dimension.

256 x 224 domain (closeup)

256 x 224 domain

600

60
55

500

radial distance [m]

50

400

45

300

40
35

200

30

100

20

10

0
10
Axial distance [m]

20

256 x 224 domain (closeup)

100
400 300 200 100
0
100
Axial distance [m]

200

300

400

48
47

Figure 1: Left: Computational domain. Left

boundary: Inflow, Right boundary: Outflow, Lower
boundary: Rotational axis of symmetry. Upper
boundary: Outflow condition ensured due to radial
farfield inclination. Right upper: Close-up. Right
lower: Close-up in vicinity of winglet tip. Note how
the mesh is strictly fitted to the disc line.

46
45
44
2

0
2
Axial distance [m]

Momentum:

= f
x

vr

v x
v
p 1 v x 2 v x
+ v x x + 1

+
r
r
x
x r r r x 2

vr

v2
v
vr
p 1 (rvr ) 2 vr

+ v x r + 1

+
r
r r r r x 2
x
r

vr

2
v v
v
v
( rv ) v
+ v x + r 1r
+

r
r
x
r x 2
r

(1b)

= fr

= f

(1c)

(1d)

The term f contains the mass-specific external forcing, where the actuator discs forcing on the
fluid is applied. The lift force along the disc in the x-r 2D domain is recalculated at each iteration.
Given the instantaneous flowfield, the velocity vector relative to the rotating blade is projected
onto the profile plane at each point along the disc line. The incidence angle is computed and
lift/drag coefficients are then looked up from the polar tables. For arbitrary geometry blades the
span-wise velocity component might be large. This is accounted for by applying the drag force
based on the size and direction of the non-projected velocity vector.
The system of equations (1a-d) is cast in a curvilinear finite volume formulation, and solved
using the SIMPLE algorithm by Patankar [6]. To speed up convergence multigrid acceleration is
applied. For details, see [7]. Applying V-cycles on 3 grid levels substantially reduces the number
of iterations needed for full convergence, typically to around 300.

Vortex-line method
For slender blades the lifting line
vortex method enables a simple
computation of the whole 3dimensional flowfield. Mathematically this method rests on the
principles laid out by potential flow
theory and in particular Helmholtz
theorems:
1. Fluid elements initially free of
vorticity remain free of vorticity.
2. Fluid elements lying on a vortex
line at some instant continue to
lie on that vortex line. More
simply, vortex lines move with
the fluid.
3. The strength of a vortex tube
does not vary with time.
Bound vorticity is computed
along the span of the blade via the
Kutta-Joukowski Theorem:
FL = s Vrel

(2)

Tip and rootvortex from 1 blade

100

50

50

100

50

50

50

100

150

200

Figure 2: Fundamental subset of vorticity lines: Bound

vorticity from one blade (magenta), shed root vorticity
(blue) and shed tip vorticity (blue)

FL is the known lift force vector from the converged actuator disc solution. s is the length of

the discretized blade segment, and Vrel is the velocity vector relative to the rotating blade. After
computation of bound vorticity distribution, the shed vorticity distribution is computed from the
requirement that all vortex lines are continuous and extend infinitely far downstream. Using the
actuator disc solution, the shed vorticity can now be traced as it propagates downstream. A
large number of shed vortex helices are traced from each blade, a fundamental subset of which
is depicted on fig.2.
All vortex lines are discretized into filament segments. The induced velocity is calculated from
Biot Savarts law. Specifically for a linear vortex filament we have [10] :
v ( x P ) =

(r1 + r2 )(r1 r2 )

4 r1r2 (r1r2 + r1 r2 )

(3)

x P is the point in Cartesian space where induction from the filament is to be evaluated. r1 and
r2 are position vectors from the vortex filament line start and end positions, x1 and x 2 , to the
evaluation point x P respectively. Equation (3) is singular for x P approaching the filament line.
This is remedied by introducing a viscous cut-off radius:

v ( x P ) =

( r1 + r2 )(r1 r2 )

4 r1r2 (r1r2 + r1 r2 ) + rc2

(4)

rc is in the order 0.01 R . As the shed vortices propagate downstream the need for discretization

diminishes. In response to this, adjacent shed vortices will be merged into one another in a
systematic way until approximately 2.5 rotor diameters downstream. Here we adopt a vortex
tube formulation and express the residual induction along the blade using semi-analytic closedform solutions involving elliptic integrals.

Optimization routine
The first three steps of our method (mesher, actuator disc cfd solver, vortex-line method) are
accomplished in 2-3 minutes on a single-processor laptop pc. This is a significant leap forward
in terms of execution speed for this kind of calculations. The disc solver is the most
computationally expensive component consuming approximately 2/3 of the calculation time, and
it scales almost linearly with problem size due to multigrid acceleration. The size of the
discretized domain is annotated on fig.1.
Due to the reduced computation time, it is feasible to release the blade layout distributions, e.g.
chord, edge-/flap-wise deflection etc, and feed them into an optimization routine. The present
optimization package is of line-search/quasi-newton type. It scales fairly linearly in complexity
with the number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF) and handles unconstrained as well as bounded
optimization problems.

3. Validation
The first part of the validation relates to the actuator disc cfd solver. It is compared to a BEM
calculation without Prandts tip-loss correction. The turbine is an SWT-2.3-93: Siemens Wind
Turbine, 2.3 MW, 93 m rotor diameter. The compared quantity is the rotor integrated mechanical
power.
Wind
speed
[m/s]
6
8
10

Rotor rot.
Velocity
[rpm]
10.0
13.5
16.0

Xblade
BEM code
[kW]
424
1009
1939

Act. Disc
new method
[kW]
423
1006
1945

Tolerance

-0.2 %
-0.3 %
0.3 %

Table 1
The energy yield calculated by both methods correlate very well. The second part of the
validation deals with the vortex-line method.
Wind
speed
[m/s]
6
8
10

Rotor rot.
Velocity
[rpm]
10.0
13.5
16.0

Field
measurement
[kW]
400
986
1894

ANSYS-CFX
/ Ellipsys
[kW]

396/392
950/945
1853/1853

Vortex line
New method
[kW]

413
982
1897

Table 2
The comparisons in table 2 involve field measurements from the SWT-2.3-93 at Hvsre
National Test Site in Jutland (Denmark), a commercial and an academic research cfd code
and of course the non-iterative free wake vortex-line method. Overall nice agreement. Both
cfd codes seem to underestimate the power by a few percent. This discrepancy relates to
the applied type of boundary layer laminar-turbulent transition. The above cfd results are for
fully turbulent cases. If run with laminar-turbulent transition enabled, the CFX results would
have been approximately 7% higher [8].
So much for the rotor integrated power output. If we draw closer attention to the radial blade
distributions, an important trend is to be noticed, see fig.3. The actuator disc method gives
lower induction and higher power on the inboard part of the blade on expense of higher
induction and lower power on the outboard part of the blade. The same holds for the vortexline method, although here, the inherent inclusion of tiploss obscures comparison on equal

terms. The slight redistribution, which is quite notable in testcase 1 because of the poweroptimal high loading, is a confirmation of similar results obtained by Ris [11].

Radial distribution comparisons

Radial distribution comparisons

35

BEM without tiploss corr.

Act.disc without tiploss corr.
Vortexline (inherent tiploss)

30

Mech.power [kW/m]

Axial induction

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

BEM without tiploss corr.

Act.disc without tiploss corr.
Vortexline (inherent tiploss)

25
20
15
10
5
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

10

20
30
Rotor radius [m]

rotor radius [m]

40

Figure 3: Comparison of relative axial induction (left) and mechanical power per radial
blade meter for the three induction methods. The blade and operational point is the
optimized result from testcase 1, see below.

4. Testcases
The four testcases to be presented all share the same settings unless otherwise stated. The
inflow is purely axial and uniform 10 m/s. The rotor is non-coned and non-tilted with a 46.2 m
radius. Each of the three blades has fixed lift-coefficient 1.0 all along the span. The
corresponding drag-coefficient is 0.01, such that the glidenumber is exactly 100. The rotor
rotational velocity is 16.0 rpm. The blade layout radial distributions, chord, edge-/flap-wise
deflection all consist of 33 points distributed with increasing resolution towards the tip. For each
testcase all or a subset of the points for one or multiple distributions are released as Degrees of
Freedom (DoFs) for the optimization routine. The optimization target parameter is the
mechanical power coefficient, Cp.
Testcase 1: Straight blade chord optimization
0.6

0.5

mech. cp

We use classic BEM without tiploss

correction to find the Cp-optimal distribution of chord along the blade span. All
33 points are released. A maximum chord
constraint of 3.5 m is imposed. Fig.4
shows the celebrated Betz limit (black) as
the maximum obtainable Cp derived from
the BEM method, 16/27 constantly along
the span. The dark blue line is the BEMcalculated Cp for the BEM-optimized chord
distribution with no drag. Notice how the
Cp approaches Betz limit asymptotically
towards the blade tip as the tip-speed ratio
increases. The green line is for the same
chord distribution, but Cp is now calculated
with the actuator disc method. Notice the
afore-mentioned redistribution of power to-

0.4

0.3

0.2

Act.Disc. :
Cp = 0.5169
Act.Disc. no drag: Cp = 0.5610
BEM no drag:
Cp = 0.5581
Betz limit:
Cp = 0.5926

0.1

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

rotor radius [m]

Figure 4: A selection of Cp-distributions

45

BEM optimized chord distribution

wards the root, leading to local spanwise values for

Cp on the inboard part of the blade exceeding
Betz. The cyan line of fig.4 is similar to the green,
but now for Cd = 0.01. The BEM-optimized chord
distribution is depicted on fig.5 and will be
maintained constant throughout the remaining
testcases.

10

20

30

40

Figure 5
Testcase 2: Edgewise winglet optimization
This time the outermost 16 points (2.5 radial meters) are released for the edge-wise deflection
distribution. The vortex-line method optimized geometry is shown in fig.6. The rotor rotational
direction is clock-wise, so the edgewise winglet is down-winded w.r.t. the relative velocity
projected onto the rotor (edgewise) plane. The obtained Cp-gain is 1.1 percent. This number
should be compared to the Cp difference between the actuator disc efficiency (0.5168) and the
vortex-line calculated efficiency (0.4950) which is 4.3 percent and thus a quantification of the
tiploss, which according to [2] should be the theoretical maximum for the obtainable Cp-gain
from applying winglets.
Edgewise winglet geometry
2

41

Figure 6

42

43

44

45

46

47

Testcase 3: Flapwise winglet optimization

Same procedure as for the preceding testcase, but now for the flapwise distribution and not the
edgewise. Again the vortex-line method is used, and in the optimization settings a maximum
flapwise deflection of 2.5 m is imposed. Fig.7 shows the flapwise geometry along with the mesh
and the pressure iso-lines in the surrounding vicinity of the downwind winglet. The obtained Cpgain is 2.6 percent, or 60% of what is theoretically obtainable [2].

Static pressure isolines

47

46.5

46

45.5

45

44.5
0.5

0.5

1.5

2.5

2.5

Figure 7

Testcase 4: Combined edge-/flap-wise winglet optimization

Velocity magnitude isolines

47

46.5

46

45.5

45

44.5
0.5

Figure 8

0.5

1.5

Now the outermost 16 points (2.5 radial meters) are released as DoFs for both the edge- and
flap-wise deflection distribution. A 2.5 m flapwise maximum deflection is imposed as upper limit
in the optimization routine. Fig.8 shows the final optimized geometry in the flapwise direction.
Note the reduction of the downwind curvature radius compared to the purely flapwise winglet
from the preceding testcase (fig.7). The Cp-gain for the combined optimization is more than the
sum of the individual Cp-gains from the isolated edge- and flap-wise winglet optimizations.

5. Conclusions
In response to a need for more complex blade evaluation, a computationally fast non-iterative
free-wake vortex line method suitable for arbitrary geometry slender turbine blades has been
developed, validated and applied specifically for winglet optimization.
Although the validation for a straight slender blade seems convincing, further validation is
needed for more complex blade geometries, e.g. the optimized winglets. Comparison with cfd is
a logical next step.
Discussing the specific optimized winglet geometries is beyond the scope of this paper, as is
any load related issue. The industrially relevant blade design seeks to optimize the energy yield
per load, and not only the energy output. Still, pursuing maximum Cp remains an issue of
academic interest.

References
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