QBlade Reviews

Fantastic! Has been invaluable in introducing me to wind energy, and I feel I could continue to use it as I dive deeper.

Hallo David, I have a problem with Q-blade 0,963 software, which is when I study the wind field, the rotor radius of the blade that I'm studying is 10,2 m and the hub hieght is 50 m ,but when I want to test the simulation, a message appears that the wind field is too small rotor??? I also have another question, which is when I want to test the loads on the blade, there is an option in a field structural data, which is root speed at design point , Should I enter here the rotational speed of the rotor of the turbine or should the value remain zero here?? THANKS

Very good thank you

Just because it is open source software and in constantly improving deserves a good note. For study and research purposes, which is my case, it is being extremely useful. Another reason that deserves a good note is the fact that it can run on computers that are not so fast. Apenas por ser um software de código aberto e por estar em constante melhoria já merece uma boa nota. Para objetivos voltados para estudo e pesquisa, que é o meu caso, está sendo extremamente útil. Outro motivo que mereça uma boa nota é o fato dele poder ser executado em computadores não tão rápidos.

I have been a reasonably happy user of the QBlade Linux distro since early 2016, until now. I just updated my old iMac 2X Intel CPU w/ the latest memory saving Peppermint OS 10, and now nothing works. I Suspect it's the flat pack setup in Linux 5.0.0 (Ubuntu Mint variant Peppermint OS 10 is....). I any one home? Great promise, tarnishes TU Berlin's reputation a bit, especially the CFD Centre. Giddy up, if you plan on staying relevant in the Linux world. Otherwise it's back to Openfoam and Paraview.

Read a notice about "not running well on linux" Just compiled Qblade on top of QT 4.8.7. and it runs like charm, built with gcc 5 on a ubuntu/debian/linux mint box after disabling and rewriting some QT5 specifics, version 6 builds straight out with QT4 under c++11 runs. Lagging performance on linux boxes are inherited from -g -O2 builds, especially regarding gsl distro builds made without disabling assertions with -DNDEBUG . I also omit gslcblas and link with fully optimized, normally gomp, mpi when needed, openblas dev's. Never use the bundled libs, and/or bin distros if you seek performance. Great app whatsoever, well written code !!

Being an aeronautical engineer with 30+ years of experience, I can appreciate the amount of work, thought and knowledge which went into creating QBlade. It is a tough call to create something which is easy to use, provides reasonably accurate answers, and does not require a supercomputer to run. I found QBlade quite by accident - after writing my own program and doing some CFD to validate results, I wanted to compare my results with something else - and that something else was QBlade. My observations: 1) Very easy to use 2) Good accuracy of QLLT simulations - compared to CFD and my own results 3) Vast array of info available in the results In short: awesome :)

Excellent Open Source Tool

Hi Qblade team firstly thank you for the wonderful opensource software for wind turbine design and simulation The software results are very good, practical and GUI is fantastic and very user friendly. As a start up owner I was looking for some afforable softwares to model and simulate wind turbines. I have seen lot of commercial codes which are out of my budget. Like an oasis in the desert Qblade and OpenFoam helped in achieving my company's targets at a minimum computation costs. I felt very happy with Qblade results. I have compared with experiment results and other commercial codes and found the deviation is negligble for simple physics. I once again thank all the team which included in bringing up this wonderful software for wind turbine enthusiast Keep rocking and keep updating Regards Dinesh DELTA-E India

Remarkable, but with twist-angle errors in the optimization of the blades by Schmitz. (Becaquse the review is longer and for precision of expression the following in German). Es ist schon beachtlich, welchen Umfang QBlade eingenommen hat! Allerdings gibt es einen systematischen Fehler von Belang. Den zu beheben hatte ich mich vor 1 ½ Jahren beim Projektmanager unter großem Einsatz bemüht, wegen Ignoranz der Gegenseite aber entnervt aufgegeben. Es handelt sich um die Optimierungs-Tools der Flügel (HAWT Rotorblade Design). Nach Betz ist alles in Ordnung. Nach Schmitz funktioniert die Chord-Optimierung, bei den Twist-Winkeln werden aber die vom Betz übernommen. Das ist falsch! Es führt zu Anströmfehlern der Sektionen zur Nabe hin unterhalb TSR 3 (auch partieller TSR!). Bei Groß-WKAs mit Nenn-TSR 9 oder mehr wirkt sich das weniger aus, ist es doch hier nennenswert erst unterhalb 1/3 R. Bei Blättern für Klein-WKAs, die z.B. für TSR 6 ausgelegt werden (damit ein Selbstanlauf ohne Pitchen noch bis 3 m/s gelingt), heißt partielle TSR alles ab ½ R zur Nabe hin, also der halbe Flügel. Das macht z.B. bei 0,1 R einen Unterschied von 42° zu 35,4° aus! (TSR6; Alpha 4°) Das bedeutet, aus den vorgesehenen Alpha 4°werden -2,6°! Fehlanströmung in Reinkultur. Da Berechnung nach Betz historisch überholt ist, da er die Strahldrehung unterschlagen hat, wäre aber der Entwurf nach Schmitz besonders wichtig. Da das nach QBlade derzeit nicht möglich ist, muss z.B. Prof. Gasch bemüht werden in dem Buch „Windkraftanlagen“ (Inzwischen von Gasch/Twele). Oder man legt gleich nach der BEM aus, wenn man es kann. Sie führt nach meiner Erkenntnis zur gleichen Geometrie, auch beim Twist. So bemerkenswert QBlade ist, so gibt es doch hin und wieder auch noch in der V 0.96-64bit kleine Unzulänglichkeiten. So erscheint bei <Save view to image file> von Polaren und Anderem zumindest bei meinem Rechner (Win 7) seit mind. 1 Jahr sowohl bei Datei-Extention png als auch bmp die Legende links unten mit schwarzem Hintergrund. Also nicht lesbar, da Schrift auch schwarz. Bei Abspeicher-Versuch in Format jpg erfolgt garnichts! Das, was zu bedienen ist, sollte grundsätzlich klappen, oder inaktiviert sein! Gewiss, ich helfe mir durch Screenshots. Die haben auch sogar mehr Informationen, sind aber leider nicht so scharf. Was ich bei QBlade nirgends finden kann sind Referenzanlagen, die damit entwickelt wurden, und vor allem messtechnische Überprüfungen von kleineren Objekten, die noch in einen Windkanal passen. Die vor längerem vom Projektverantwortlichen mir zugesandte Vergleichsreferenz „Pigott-Rotor“ ist zu wenig und außerdem unpassend, da nur 1,2 m Durchmesser und lausig profiliert, alle Blätter anders. QBlade bekommt von mir trotzdem 4 Sterne, aber mit Schatten auf dem 4. Stern. 4 stars, but with shadow oft he 4tht.

this is the simple and easy to work with wind turbine blade .

This software has been extremely helpful to my senior design team. We are building a small wind turbine to compete in a Department of Energy sponsored competition. Q-Blade made it easy to iterate on design and see how changing the parameters affected the coefficient of performance and other performance characteristics. There have been some bugs to deal with, but the software is in beta state and most of them have been something you can work around.

A great analysis software that is still giving great assistance to wind turbine researchers. Keep up the good work!

Great GUI for a open source project, haven't seen any bugs yet. Everything from foil analysis to AEP, terrific! Of course it's still beta so there are inconveniences. Great work!