Impact of blade shape and pitch angle on wind turbine forward scattering

Abstract

2D Fresnel-Kirchhoff diffraction approach is used to study the impact of blade shape and pitch angle on the diffraction loss of a 3-blade rotor of a wind turbine (WT) considering negligible impact of the ground plane (radar beam). The projection of the blade into the rotor plane (2D approximation) is depending on pitch angle and, thus, varying with wind speed. Results obtained for different blade shapes and pitch angles are consistent and undermine that the impact of the rotor is well understood.