• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.75-84
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• 2015

This paper presents the dimensionless wall distance, y+ effect on SST turbulent model for wind turbine blade. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Phase VI wind turbine was used for the study, which the wind tunnel and structural test data has publicly available. The near wall treatment and turbulent characteristics have important role for proper CFD simulation. Most of the CFD development in this area is focused on advanced turbulence model closures including second moment closure models, and so called Low-Reynolds (low-Re) number and two-layer turbulence models. However, in many cases CFD aerodynamic predictions based on these standard models still show a large degree of uncertainty, which can be attributed to the use of the $\epsilon$-equation as the turbulence scale equation and the associated limitations of the near wall treatment. The present paper demonstrates the y+ definition effect on SST (Shear Stress Transport) turbulent model with advanced automatic near wall treatment model and Gamma theta transitional model for transition from lamina to turbulent flow using commercial ANSYS-CFX. In all cases the SST model shows to be superior, as it gives more accurate predictions and is less sensitive to grid variations.