Republic of the Philippines

Mindanao State University–Iligan Institute of Technology College of Engineering and

Technology
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Technology ME 157 Power Plant Design
Engineering

Chapter 2

Effects of Gurney flap and splitter plate on a small horizontal axis wind
turbine

Review of Related Literature

Introduction

Gurney flap were invented by well-known race car driver and team manager Dan Gurney in 1971 for
use on his team’s cars to increase traction for better handling. It was placed on top trailing edge of rear
wing on his race car to provide extra rear-end down force with minimal aerodynamics. Later on it was
applied on aeronautic community by R.H Liebeck in 1979 it was first reporting airfoil improved
performance by Gurney Flap. Liebeck stated using gurney flaps may reduce the drag of the airfoil while
increasing the total lift resulting in performance increase and load alleviation. The computational fluid
dynamics CFD of Gurney Flap has been performed extensively in past. The performance of Gurney
Flaps are well established and experimentally verified since the late 70s (Pechlivanoglou 2012). As
time passes by, various gurney flaps shapes were invented in the hopes of increasing the aerodynamics
performance of airfoil that will lead to its applications (e.g. Wind Turbine Blade).

Figure 1: Gurney Flap (Pechlivanoglou, 2012)

Figure 2: Airfoil with a Gurney flap attached in its trailing streamline (Inside Racing Technology,

Race Tech 104)

 Aerodynamics

It was found out that using a gurney flap would lead to dragging increase without significant lift
benefits if it is improperly sized and this aerodynamic investigation was performed in the 70s (R.H
Liebeck, 1979). Aerodynamics of Wind Turbines is a comprehensive introduction to the aerodynamics,
scaled design and analysis, and optimization of horizontal-axis wind turbines. Aerodynamic theory tells
us there’s a consistent level of lift that require on the length of the blade to get optimum power output.
Gurney flap sits on the trailing edge of the airfoil and it deflects the streamline travelling around the
pressure surface of the airfoil. This deflection of the streamline means actually mimicking the effects of
an airfoil with camber.

Figure 3: Effects of Gurney Flap on airfoil

Air foil with more camber gives more lift for the same angle of attack. Effectively change the
camber line of about wind and extended, resulting of higher coefficient of lift. The wing behaves as if a
bit longer than it is making it more aggressive wing profile. One of the disadvantages of a solid gurney
flap is it can cause vibration and noise due to the 2D vortex shedding. Because of this phenomenon,
Mayda and van Dam (C. P. van Dam et. al, 2007 and B. L. Storms et. al, 1993) investigated the effects
of serrated and slit gurney flap based on the research of Bechert et al. in the year 2000. An initial
research made by Liebeck (R. H. Liebeck, 1979) predicted the range for the optimal Gurney flap size as
a percentage of chord length.
In the study made by Pechlivanoglou last 2012, various gurney flap shapes and sizes were studied and
evaluated on a large wind turbine to identify its optimal dimensions. Some of the basic variants are
(fig. 4): the standard L-profile, Gurney flap, and splitter plate, and Wedge-shaped Gurney flap. It was
found out that of all three variations, the wedge-shaped gurney flap has a better overall performance
and the Gurney flap equipped with a splitter plate has a slightly reduced drag. Therefore based on this
aforementioned study, a combination of a splitter plate and wedge-shaped gurney flap would be the
optimal shape. Concerning drag and lift increase, GF height in the range of 1 – 1.5%c is found to be
optimal.

Figure 4: Various Gurney flap configurations (Pechlivanoglou, 2012)

Splitter-plate (c)

The first concept for damping the flow structures is to prohibit motion between the top and bottom end
of the flap by introducing a splitter-plate. The plate is mounted perpendicular to the center of the

h
Gurney-flap and its length is similar to the flap height = 1%. A similar concept has already been
c
successfully applied to cylinder flows [9]. Such kinds of flows are characterized by vortex shedding
with a single dominant frequency which is able to transfer a large amount of energy from the mean flow
and feed it into dissipation processes giving rise to increased drag. The splitter-plate however, should
separate the upper and lower shear layer and avoid the momentum flux between them. Numerical
simulations at Re = 50,000 could clearly reproduce this effect for the flow around a cylinder. A plate
with a length of one cylinder diameter caused a significant change in the flow-structures of the near
wake and the drag could be decreased by 37% [20]. In the present computations of an airfoil with
Gurney-flap and splitter-plate the mean lift coefficient slightly decreases compared to the airfoil with a
standard Gurney. At the same time the induced drag could be reduced by 36%. Lift fluctuations and the
flow structures remain almost undamped, but occur slightly downstream. The main difference between
a cylinder flow and the present application is that in the case of a Gurney-flap the separation points on
both ends of the flap are fixed whereas in the cylinder flow separation strongly oscillates.
Consequently, one effect of the splitter-plate is to damp the fluctuations due to movements of the
separation point.

Electrical/Mechanical Structure
 Since it is a passive fixed element, the mechanical structure of the Gurney flap and splitter plate
is slightly more complicated but still fairly simple and it is permanently fixed at the trailing side of the
airfoil (Pechlivanoglou, 2012). Moreover, the loads imposed on the gurney flap are not high during
normal operation (J. A. Kelly et. al, 1954) and also during off-design operation.

Wind turbine performance

In wind turbine operation, the separation of large flow occurs specifically in its transitional geometry of
the blade, in which the root section forms a transition from an airfoil to a circular blade to attach it to
the hub. A study was made by Zhang et al (2019) about the effects of Gurney flaps on the aerodynamic
performance of a horizontal axis wind turbine. It was then found out from the aforementioned study that
the larger Gurney flap reduces the effect on the power generated because of the projecting out of the
local boundary layer of the flow. The performance of a typical wind turbine, designed to give maximum
power coefficient at a tip speed ratio of 5 -6, has been estimated over a range of speed ratios and pitch
angles using blade element theory.

Blade Integration and Tip Losses

Passive Gurney flap integration on wind turbine blade structures is simple since they only require
simple mounting points (Pechlivanoglou, 2012). These could also be applied to existing wind turbine
blades. During production, the elements can also be attached to the outer surface of the blades. Drag
and lift calculated by numerical method are called wing of infinite span performance. The lift is the
result of the pressure difference between the top and the bottom wing. The more pressure difference is
the more leaks, because the more fluid want to get to the other side by the shortest path it finds. The lift
reduces when air flow from high static pressure passes to the low static pressure surface. (Manwell et al
2009).
Momentum Theories
It is used to predict the relative performance of lifting propellers and rotors. Small wind turbine has
power output less than 20kW, these turbines design for low cut-in wind speeds (3-4 m/s). It is used for
residential application also they are available for remote places where the grid is far away and the
transmission is difficult. Their blade is about 1.5-3.5 m in diameter and produces 1-10 kW of electricity
at their optimal wind speed. Designing a wind turbine must know about the simple model that was
generally attributed to Betz 1926. It can be used as a basis in determining the ideal power output of an
ideal wind turbine, wind thrust on ideal, effect of the rotor operation on local wind field (Manwell et al
2009, 92). Betz concluded 59.3% of kinetic energy from wind can be used to spin the turbine and
generate electricity and common efficiencies are in 35%-45%. This value below the theoretical limit is
caused by the inefficiencies and losses attributed to different configuration, rotor blades profile, finite
wings, friction and turbine designs.

Figure 5 The betz, ideal constant and actual wind turbine power ceofficient

Figure 5 The Betz, ideal constant and actual wind turbine power coefficient as a function of the TSR.
Base from figure 5, maximum power extraction occurs at the optimal TSR, where the difference
between the actual TSR (Blue Curve) and the line defined by constant TSR is the lowest. This
difference represents the power in the wind that is not captured by the wind turbine.

Effects of Drag and Number of Blades

The fewer number of blades has higher through flow speed, while the larger number of blades provides
larger torque. The best power coefficient lies in between the two extremes. The appropriate number of
blades is important to match the generator performance curve for optimal overall performance and
efficiency (Sheng & Shih 1984-1992). In the wind power industry the development and research in the
last decade mostly on 3 bladed turbines. In general 2-bladed wind turbine uses higher tip speed ratios
Compare to 3-bladed wind turbines. 2-bladed turbine was only minor study due to its disadvantages
compared to 3-bladed turbine, such as the higher noise emission, distracting visual effect and
unfavorable dynamic behavior. There is a significant difference of the maximum achievable power of
the both wind turbines when drag is not present. However, when the lift to drag ratio is introduced, the
coefficient of power decreases when the tip speed ratio is too high.
Figure 6 Maximum achievable power coefficients as a function of number of blades, no drag (Manwell
et.al 2009, 140)

The maximum achievable power coefficient, Cp, for turbines with an optimum blade shape but with a
finite number of blades and aerodynamic drag has been calculated by Wilson et al. (1976). Their results
fit the available data with accuracy within 0.5% for tip speed ratios from 4 to 20, sliding ratio from 25
to infinity and from 1 to 3 blades.

Figure 7 Maximum achievable power coefficients of a three-bladed optimum rotor a function of the
sliding ratio CL/CD.

As shown figure 7, it is clear from the result on the figure that there is a significant reduction in
maximum achievable power as the airfoil drag increases.
Gurney Flap Design
The Gurney flap (GF) was invented by Dan Gurney, a race car driver, in 1960s. It was used in race cars
to decrease the drag force in which it increases a car’s top speed and to increase the downward force
which allows the car to turn into tight corners without tire slip and increases traction during acceleration
and braking. Basically, a gurney flap is applied to an airfoil to enhance its aerodynamic performance
(Wang et.al, 2008).
A two-dimensional airfoil with and without a GF is shown in Figure 8a GF is a flat plate attached at or
near the trailing edge, perpendicular to the chord line, and pointed towards the high pressure side of an
airfoil. In the case of cars, the high pressure side is at the top since the downward force is needed, i.e.
opposite to airplanes where the lift force is desired. The GF acts as an obstruction wherein a vortex is
formed, increasing drag. Even though there is an increase in drag, there will be more lift to be generated
due to greater region of attached flow. As seen from Figure 8a, the flow separation occurs before
reaching the trailing edge of the airfoil. Compared to Figure 8b, even at high angles of attack, the
streamline is still attached up to the trailing edge of the airfoil. Also, vortices in the trailing edge of the
airfoil with gurney flap are angled upward than the airfoil without one. Because of these, it results to
more lift generation.

Figure 8a Streamlines in an Airfoil

(Inside Racing Technology, Race Tech 104)
 Figure 8b streamlines in an Airfoil with a Gurney flap attached in its trailing
Edge (Inside Racing Technology, Race Tech 104)

An experimental study was conducted by Liebeck (1978) on adding a GF on a Newman airfoil. It was
concluded that GF that has a height of 1.25% of the chord length improved the maximum lift
coefficient and reduced the drag at the same time. It was also found that the optimum height of the GF
is around 1% and 2% of the chord length. The aerodynamic benefits of the GF are maximized around
the said heights.
Li ET. al. (2002) conducted a study on the effects of Gurney flaps on a NACA0012 Airfoil. The effect
of the GF is to significantly increase the maximum lift coefficient of the airfoil as shown in Figure 9 as
these are compared to a bare.

Figure 9 (a) Lift and (b) drag coefficients vs. angle of attack of NACA 0012
(Li et. al., 2002)

As shown from figure 9 numerically the values of lift coefficient increases at different height, it
increased by 10%, 11%, 18%, 21% and 27% for the GF heights of 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2% and 3% of the
chord length, respectively.
Several gurney flaps were tested on a large wind turbine which is the DU96W180 wind tunnel test
wing. Various Gurney Flap sizes were evaluated in order to identify its optimal dimensions. As shown
in figure 4. Various gurney flap configuration a. standard l-profile, b. Gurney flap and splitter plate, c.
wedge-shaped gurney flap. They were tested and have a general lift of performance characteristics. The
Wedge shape has a better performance because it has a slightly reduced drag. It was tested on a Gurney
Flap height of 1-1.5%c and found to be optimal with respect to lift and drag increase.

Figure 10 Various Gurney flap configurations tested on a wind tunnel wing based on the DU96W180
airfoil [130].

As shown in figure 9, it show that Gurney flap + splitter plate is more efficient than Wedge gurney flap
and L-profile gurney flap which is its lift coefficient increase from the normal turbine without gurney
flap it has also a high coefficient lift than any other wind turbine with gurney flap. Now what I’m
telling is designing a small horizontal axis wind turbine using a gurney flap + splitter plate might be
efficient.