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The blade is made out of an orthotropic composite material, it has a varying thickness and it also has a spar inside the blade for structural rigidity. These specs, which are important for the FEA simulation, are described in  more details in Part 2 of the tutorial.

The turbulent wind is coming from the z-direction at 12 m/s which is a typical rated wind speed for a turbine this size. This incoming flow makes the blade rotate at an angular velocity of -2.22 rad/s about the z-axis (the blade is thus spinning clockwise when looking at it from the front, like most real wind turbines). The blade root is offset from the axis of rotation by 1 meter to make it more representative of an actual turbine where the blades would connect to the hub. Note that the blade root is offset from the axis of rotation by 1 meter to represent the blade being connected to a hub. 

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In this section of the tutorial, the blade geometry is imported, a mesh is created around the blade and the Fluent solver is then used to find the aerodynamics loading on the blade, the fluid streamlines and the torque generated. Here is more information about the set-up. 

Solver: Pressure-based

Viscous model: The turbulent flow model, k-omega SST

Fluid: Air We will use air at standard conditions (15 degree celcius). Its density is 1.225 kg/m^3 and its viscosity is 1.7894e-05 kg/m*s.

Cell zone condition: Moving frame of reference (with the blade).

Main Boundary conditions:

              Inlet: Velocity of 12 m/s with turbulent viscosity of 5% and turbulent viscosity ratio of 10. 

              Outlet: Pressure of 1 atm. 

              Blade: Wall

 Finally, periodics are used to allow the visualization of results for three blades  Using periodicity, we will simulate the flow around one blade and extrapolate the solution to two more blades in order to visualize the results for a 3 blade rotor. Here is an example of the results that can be obtained at the end of this tutorial.

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