Comparative study of PARSEC, CST, and Bezier-PARSEC (BP3333) for GA-driven wind-turbine airfoil design

Abstract

Efficient aerodynamic design of wind-turbine blade sections relies on robust shape parameterization coupled with powerful optimization. This study benchmarks three leading schemes-PARSEC, Class/Shape Transformation (CST), and Bezier-PARSEC 3333 (BP3333) – within a genetic algorithm coupled with airfoil analysis software. The objective of this study is to find the best airfoil representation scheme which consumes less computational effort and gives the best lift‑to‑drag ratio (fitness) in a large design space for the ideal aerodynamic design optimization. The results for NACA 4415 airfoil have shown that the final geometries obtained by CST and BP3333 methods both give better results than the geometry obtained by PARSEC method. On the other hand, PARSEC method for NACA 23,012 geometry is superior to the others. These results reveal clear trade-offs between computational cost and achievable performance for each parameterization, guiding airfoil designers in selecting the optimal representation for specific blade-section families.