Читать книгу Wind Energy Handbook - Michael Barton Graham - Страница 60

The momentum theory of Section 3.1 uses the concept of the actuator disc across which a pressure drop develops, constituting the energy extracted by the rotor. In the rotor disc theory of Section 3.3, the actuator disc is depicted as being swept out by a multiplicity of aerofoil blades, each represented by a radial vortex of constant strength ΔΓ that denotes the bound circulation around each blade section (the totality of spanwise vorticity in the blade surface sheets). Each of these vortex lines is usually considered to lie along the quarter‐chord line of the blade but cannot terminate in the flow field at the tip. Therefore, each vortex is shed at the tip of the blade and convects downstream with the local flow velocity, forming a wake vortex in the form of a helix with strength ΔΓ. If the number, B, of blades is assumed to be very large but the solidity of the total is finite and small, then the accumulation of helical tip vortices will form the surface of a tube. As the number of blades approaches infinity, the tube surface will become a continuous tubular vortex sheet; see Figure 3.6.

Figure 3.6 Helical vortex wake shed by rotor with three blades each with uniform circulation ΔΓ.

From the root of each blade, assuming it reaches to the axis of rotation, a line vortex of strength ΔΓ will extend downstream along the axis of rotation, contributing to the total root vortex of strength Γ(=BΔΓ). The streamtube will expand in radius as the flow of the wake inside the tube slows down. Because the axial convection of the tip vortices is therefore slowing from the rotor to the far wake, their spacing decreases and hence the vorticity density on the tube sheet representing the tip vortices increases. The vorticity is confined to the surface of this tube, the root vortex, and to the bound vortex sheet swept by the multiplicity of blades to form the rotor disc; elsewhere in the wake and everywhere else in the entire flow field the flow is irrotational.

The nature of the tube's expansion cannot be determined by means of the momentum theory but is known from numerical simulations to be usually fairly small. Therefore, as an approximation, the tube is considered to remain cylindrical, as shown in Figure 3.7. The Biot–Savart law is used to determine the induced velocity at any point in the vicinity of the actuator disc. The cylindrical vortex model allows the whole flow field to be determined and is accurate within the limitations of the non‐expanding cylindrical wake.

Figure 3.7 Simplified helical vortex wake ignoring wake expansion.