The need for renewable energy, thus more efficient wind turbines, is ever increasing. Accurate prediction of the performance in the design stage is necessary. In particular, predicting the dynamic performance of a wind turbine in the region where it undergoes highly unsteady flow is very challenging. We investigated the dynamic performance of an airfoil, which is typical for megastructure wind farms, in support of the development of more efficient design tools in the future.

Dynamic stall introduces transient loads that excite blade vibrations, which contribute to mechanical fatigue and can lead to blade failure. In order to design wind turbine airfoils that are less prone to dynamic stall, the onset of dynamic stall has to be predicted. This work contributes to the development of reduced-order models that predict dynamic stall in a cost-efficient way. The models can be used in the design process of new airfoil geometries of future wind turbines.