Blade Element Method

Dear Nacer,

Here are my answers to your questions:

  1. The relative velocity may be dominated by the rotor rotation, omega x r, which is linear with radius (r), but there are other factors that can impact the relative velocity, including shear, yaw, turbulence, turbine vibrations, etc.

  2. An axial induction of 1/3 is Betz optimal for ideal conditions. The tangential induction is associated with wake rotation, and the ideal (from Betz theory) would be 0. For a high TSR rotor, I would expect small values of the tangential induction (close to zero).

  3. The following forum post from many years ago has links to several publicly available airfoil data tables, but some of the links are broken nowadays: Where to find airfoil data - #3 by Marshall.Buhl. I’m not aware that NREL currently supports a database of publicly available wind turbine airfoils.

Best regards,