To solve the problems in the inverse design of airfoil for wind turbine blade, the stream function equations expressed by vorticity were solved and the velocities at the panel nodes were directly obtained. The other parameters such as pressure coefficient, lifting coefficient as well as torque coefficient can be calculated via the Bernoulli equation. A new airfoil was obtained by using vortex panel method, taking NACA2412 as the original geometrical shape and the pressure coefficients of NACA2412 airfoil as the target. Optimization design for a small wind turbine was conducted by incorporating the newly obtained airfoil. Numerical test showed that the inverse design based on vortex panel method had high accuracy and wide adaptation. By using bump function to represent the geometry of the airfoil, optimization designs can be achieved for different initial airfoil geometry and wind turbine blade.

wind turbine arifoil  /  vortex panel method  /  optimization design