Contribution to the Aerodynamic Study of the Air-Sand Flow Around a Wind Turbine Blade Installed in Desert Environment of Algeria

Algeria has recently started to use wind energy to produce electricity, where the first wind farm was installed in a desert site located at the south, in Kaberten at Adrar region. The main objective of this work is to study the impact of the sand numerically using a multiphase CFD model based on a Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. In this approach, the air is considered as a continuous phase governed by averaged Navier Stokes equations and the sand particles are considered as a discrete phase governed by Newton's second law. A parametric study includes the variation of different parameters, such as particles concentration, particles volume fraction and particles diameter were applied to the local region of Adrar. The comparison between results obtained by the multiphasic model and results of air without particles (monophasic model) allowed us to identify the global influence of sand on the aerodynamic performance of the rotor under different sandy wind conditions. It was noted that the presence of sand particles could significantly reduce the aerodynamic performances.