Abstract
Misaligned wind turbine rotors experience uneven loads because of two effects: dissymmetry of lift, and skewed wake effect. Rotor-crafts that have a similar problem introduce various mechanisms to combat this — one of them is to add a δ3-hinge. The hinge provides the blade with an additional degree of freedom to relieve the unbalanced loads; in theory, it is a self-correcting mechanism. In this work, we couple a blade element momentum (BEM) approach for the aerodynamics to a rigid-body model that simulates the hinge rotation. The results from BEM are used to identify the working mechanisms of the hinged rotor and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of such a rotor.
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