QBlade

QBlade has been created as an engineering instrument for wind turbine calculation. It can be useful for designing custom airfoils and checking their performance.

No installation is required for working with the application as double-clicking on the executable file in the extracted archive is sufficient to launch the program.

The interface is clear and simple. All options are available in the top part of the screen and include the possibility to start a new project that allows creating a fresh airfoil design or make an XFoil inverse analysis to determine the pressure distribution on the airfoil, which provides details about lift and drag. XFoil direct analysis application is also included.

Provided the necessary information, the program also offers the means for simulating a rotor. Various parameters are available, such as tip and root loss, 3D correction, Reynolds drag correction or foil interpolation. The settings include defining the tip speed ration start, end and delta.

QBlade is targeted at a specific type of users and despite the clear looks it is not for everyone. Some knowledge in the field of rotor and blade engineering is necessary in order to fully grasp the functionality of the application.

Also, in lack of proper documentation and knowledge of aerodynamics concepts a regular user would have trouble understanding the functions available. During our testing we experienced some stability issues that led to crashing of the program.

Although QBlade is pretty simple it can prove to be a powerful asset to engineers as it includes design and simulation abilities for HAWT and VAWT rotors revealing fundamental relations between the design concept and turbine performance.

It does not cover all the intricacies of blade and rotor functional scenarios but it includes the relevant variables.