DTU 10 MW Reference Wind Turbine. Wind turbine rotor aerodynamics validation
The DTU 10 MW Reference Wind Turbine, a three-bladed upwind rotor with 178.3 m diameter and 119 m hub height, is an open reference design developed in DTU's Light Rotor project as the 10 MW open successor to the NREL 5 MW reference, and is widely used to validate wind-turbine rotor aerodynamics codes. Flow360 results are compared against DTU CFD data across below-rated wind speeds (U = 8–11 m/s) using the Spalart–Allmaras DDES turbulence model and a sliding-mesh rotating zone. Comparisons include shaft power, rotor thrust, and spanwise sectional loads (Ct, Cp) along the blade.
External reference data
DTU 10 MW Reference Wind Turbine — DTU CFD aeroelastic code results. https://gitlab.windenergy.dtu.dk/rwts/dtu-10mw-rwt
Integrated Loads
| Quantity | Units | Flow360 | Reference | Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thrust (U = 11 m/s, medium mesh) | kN | 1597 | 1555 | +2.7% |
| Shaft Power (U = 11 m/s, medium mesh) | MW | 10.195 | 10.088 | +1.1% |
Validation plots
Comparison of Flow360 predictions against reference data. Click an image to expand.
Velocity sweep
Sectional loads
Velocity sweep — sectional
Solver performance
Two-stage simulation at 11 m/s and 8.836 RPM. Stage 1 settles the flow at 10°/step (16 revs); stage 2 forks from stage 1 and gathers the output at 3°/step (4 revs) on the low-dissipation settings.
Mesh resolution
35.38 M nodes
Cloud cost
69 FC
Time to solution
4.2 min
Hardware
64 × H200 GPUs
Run Settings
Simulation type
Unsteady
Time settings
(16 rev, 10°) → (4 rev, 3°)