Multi-slotted airfoil design for enhanced aerodynamic performance and economic efficiency

Recently, slotted airfoils have been introduced as a passive flow control approach. The slotted airfoil method resulted in stall delay and enhanced the lift coefficient. The single-slot airfoil is unable to delay stall if the flow is injected downstream of the separation point at the stall angle of attack. A multi-slot airfoil ensures air is injected along the airfoil suction side, delaying stalls over a large range of AOA. The current study focuses on enhancing wind turbine blades’ efficiency by utilizing a novel multi-slot NACA23012C airfoil design as a passive control approach. A numerical study of the optimal grid number was carried out, followed by validating the numerical model with previous experimental results in the literature. The numerical study is followed by a study of the effect of the number of airfoil slots: one, two, three, four, five, and six. The characteristics of the flow field were analyzed to explain the benefit of applying multi-slotted on the aerodynamic performance of an airfoil with a high AOA at Reynolds number 2.74 × 10⁵. The findings showed a significant improvement in the lift coefficient values and the delayed stall AOA for multi-slot airfoils compared to the clean and single-slot airfoils. Increasing the slots number is effective up to four slots. The four-slot airfoil improved lift by 15.8%, and the two slots achieved a 22.31% CL/CD increase. Future work could optimize slot geometry, validate findings experimentally, and study dynamic and 3D effects.