Surface Definition Code for Turbine Blade Surfaces

A numerical interpolation scheme has been developed for generating the three-dimensional geometry of wind turbine blades. The numerical scheme consists of (1) creating the frame of the blade through the input of two or more airfoils at some specific spanwise stations and then scaling and twisting them according to the prescribed distributions of chord, thickness, and twist along the span of theblade; (2) transforming the physical coordinates of the blade frame into a computational domain that complies with the interpolation requirements; and finally (3) applying the bi-tension spline interpolation method, in the computational domain, to determine the coordinates of any point on the blade surface. Detailed descriptions of the overall approach to and philosophy of the code developmentare given along with the operation of the code. To show the usefulness of the hi-tension spline interpolation code developed, two examples are given, namely CARTER and MICON blade surface generation. Numerical results are presented in both graphic and tabular data forms. The solutions obtained in this work show that the computer code developed can be a powerful tool for generating the surfacecoordinates for any three-dimensional blade.