Abstract: The effects of vortex generators on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine airfoil was studied in this paper.Pressure wind tunnel test of NACA4418 thin airfoil segment model was carried out to study the effects of vortex generators with different heights（3,5 mm）,shapes （triangle,streamline） and chord-wise positions （10%c,20%c,30%c,40%c,c is chord length） on aerodynamic performance of airfoil.The related laws were analyzed.The results show that compared with the vortex generators with two different heights,the vortex generators with large height（H=5 mm）have better effect on increasing lift and reducing drag,and the streamline vortex generators have no more advantage than the triangular ones in improving lift-drag ratio of airfoil,the aerodynamic performance of airfoil is greatly improved by installing vortex generators at different chord-wise positions,among which the vortex generators at 20%c have the best control effect on the airfoil surface fluid,and the effect of increasing lift and reducing drag is the best.