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pyBEMT An Implementation of The Blade Element Mome

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pyBEMT An Implementation of The Blade Element Mome

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Mark7418
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pyBEMT: An implementation of the Blade Element

Momentum Theory in Python


Knut Erik T. Giljarhus1
1 Department of Mechanical and Structural Engineering and Materials Science, University of
Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
DOI: 10.21105/joss.02480
Software
• Review
Summary
• Repository
• Archive
The use of rotating blades to generate thrust in the form of propellers or torque in the form
of turbines is of great significance for transportation and energy generation. This has led to
Editor: Stefan Pfenninger extensive research and development of mathematical models to better understand, predict and
optimize the performance of these machines. The blade element momentum theory (BEMT)
Reviewers:
is one such method with a long history dating back to Glauert (1935).
• @rafmudaf
• @antviro Despite the development of more sophisticated methods, such as vortex methods (Gohard,
1978), the blade element momentum theory is still considered relevant for the study of rotor
Submitted: 08 June 2020 design. Its simple formulation lends itself to use in education and to quickly analyse new
Published: 07 September 2020 ideas. As examples of recent uses of BEMT, it was used by Herniczek, Jee, Sanders, &
License
Feszty (2019) to compare airfoils and blade shapes for an unmanned rotorcraft and by Borg,
Authors of papers retain Xiao, Allsop, Incecik, & Peyrard (2020), together with computational fluid dynamics, to
copyright and release the work analyze the performance of a high-solidity tidal turbine design. Several open-source packages
under a Creative Commons include an implementation of BEMT, for instance the AeroDyn (Moriarty & Hansen, 2005)
Attribution 4.0 International solver used in the whole-turbine simulation software OpenFAST(“OpenFAST,” 2020), and the
License (CC BY 4.0). QBlade (Marten, Wendler, Pechlivanoglou, Nayeri, & Paschereit, 2013) software for wind
turbine blade design. QBlade has later been forked to develop JBLADE (Silvestre, Morgado,
& Pascoa, 2013), a software focusing on propeller design.
pyBEMT is unique in that it offers a unified implementation of the blade element momentum
theory, supporting both propellers and turbines. This is of particular interest in education, to
demonstrate the similarities between these two domains. The software is designed as a stand-
alone Python implementation with emphasis on readability and extensibility. Its modular
design and permissive license also makes it suitable for integration into other simulation tools.
Other notable features of the package are a model for coaxial rotors and optimization of
rotor parameters using the differential evolution algorithm in SciPy. The use of coaxial rotor
systems has recently seen renewed interest with the growth in unmanned aerial vehicles and
autonomous systems.
Figure 1 shows two examples of predictions from the model for a tidal stream turbine (Bahaj,
Molland, Chaplin, & Batten, 2007) and an airplane propeller (Theodorsen, Stickle, & Brevoort,
1937), respectively. pyBEMT is currently applied in research projects on rotor design for
unmanned aerial vehicles and turbine design for tidal stream turbines, as well as used in
education within fluid dynamics and computational engineering.

Giljarhus, K. E., (2020). pyBEMT: An implementation of the Blade Element Momentum Theory in Python. Journal of Open Source Software, 1
5(53), 2480. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02480
Figure 1: pyBEMT applied to a tidal stream turbine (left) and an airplane propeller (right).

Acknowledgements

Jørgen Apeland, Vetle B. Ingebretsen and Stian R. Hidle from the University of Stavanger are
acknowledged for their contribution of experimental validation data.

References

Bahaj, A. S., Molland, A. F., Chaplin, J. R., & Batten, W. M. J. (2007). Power and thrust
measurements of marine current turbines under various hydrodynamic flow conditions in
a cavitation tunnel and a towing tank. Renewable Energy, 32(3), 407–426. doi:10.1016/
j.renene.2006.01.012
Borg, M. G., Xiao, Q., Allsop, S., Incecik, A., & Peyrard, C. (2020). A numerical performance
analysis of a ducted, high-solidity tidal turbine. Renewable Energy. doi:10.1016/j.renene.
2020.04.005
Glauert, H. (1935). Airplane propellers. In Aerodynamic Theory (pp. 169–360). Berlin,
Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Gohard, J. C. (1978). Free wake analysis of a wind turbine aerodynamics. Wind energy
conversion. ASRL-TR-184-14. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of
Aeronautics; Astronautics, Aeroelastic; Structures Research Laboratory: Cambridge, MA.
doi:10.2172/5428795
Herniczek, M. K., Jee, D., Sanders, B., & Feszty, D. (2019). Rotor blade optimization and
flight testing of a small UAV rotorcraft. Journal of Unmanned Vehicle Systems, 7(4),
325–344. doi:10.1139/juvs-2017-0005
Marten, D., Wendler, J., Pechlivanoglou, G., Nayeri, C. N., & Paschereit, C. O. (2013).
QBLADE: An open source tool for design and simulation of horizontal and vertical axis
wind turbines. International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering,
3(3), 264–269.
Moriarty, P. J., & Hansen, A. C. (2005). AeroDyn theory manual. National Renewable Energy
Lab., Golden, CO (US). doi:10.2172/15014831

Giljarhus, K. E., (2020). pyBEMT: An implementation of the Blade Element Momentum Theory in Python. Journal of Open Source Software, 2
5(53), 2480. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02480
OpenFAST. (2020).GitHub repository. GitHub. Retrieved from https://github.com/
OpenFAST/openfast
Silvestre, M. A., Morgado, J. P., & Pascoa, J. (2013). JBLADE: A propeller design and
analysis code. In 2013 International Powered Lift Conference (p. 4220). doi:10.2514/6.
2013-4220
Theodorsen, T., Stickle, G. W., & Brevoort, M. J. (1937). Characteristics of six propellers
including the high-speed range. Annual Report-National Advisory Committee for Aero-
nautics, 401.

Giljarhus, K. E., (2020). pyBEMT: An implementation of the Blade Element Momentum Theory in Python. Journal of Open Source Software, 3
5(53), 2480. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02480

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