Integrated aerodynamic design and manufacturability optimization of a 10 kW horizontal-axis wind turbine blade using REMUS and BEM frameworks

Abstract

This study presents a manufacturability-oriented aerodynamic design workflow for a 10 kW horizontal-axis wind turbine blade. Thirty-five NACA-series airfoils were screened using the Robust Envelope Minimax with Smoothness (REMUS) framework, which ranks candidates according to regret, robustness, drag-bucket width, and stall behavior. NACA 4518 was selected for the modeled aerodynamic span. A nonlinear reference geometry was then obtained using blade element momentum theory with Prandtl tip-loss and high-induction corrections. The chord and twist distributions were linearized to generate 225 prescribed candidate blades. The best candidate within this finite set achieved a design-point power coefficient of 0.4707, compared with 0.4516 for the corrected-BEM baseline. However, this improvement was confined to a narrow region around tip-speed ratios of 7-8, and the linearized candidate performed worse under off-design conditions. A numerical cross-check against QBlade produced differences below 3.2%. Because both implementations rely primarily on BEM-type aerodynamic modeling, this agreement is interpreted as an implementation-level consistency check rather than independent experimental or high-fidelity validation.