The effects of two types of flow control devices, vortex generators (VGs) and Gurney\nflaps (GFs), on the power output performance of a multi-megawatt horizontal axis wind turbine\nis presented. To that end, an improved blade element momentum (BEM)-based solver has been\ndeveloped and BEM-based computations have been carried out on the National Renewable Energy\nLaboratory (NREL) 5 MWbaseline wind turbine. The results obtained from the clean wind turbine\nare compared with the ones obtained from the wind turbine equipped with the flow control devices.\nA significant increase in the average wind turbine power output has been found for all of the\nflow control device configurations and for the wind speed realizations studied in the present work.\nFurthermore, a best configuration case is proposed which has the largest increase of the average\npower output. In that case, increments on the average power output of 10.4% and 3.5% have been\nfound at two different wind speed realizations. The thrust force and bending moment in the root\nof the blade have also been determined and compared with the values of the clean wind turbine.\nA residual increase in the bending moment of less than 1% has been found.
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