Study of performance of h-rotor darrieus wind turbines

Abstract

Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) are mostly manufactured keeping in mind the site and conditions that the wind turbine would face. There is a need to know which type of VAWT would be optimal in the conditions present at the installation site. The major factors involved are blade profile, wind velocity and blade pitch angle. This study is undertaken to study these factors and their effects on influencing the efficiency of the VAWT. A model has been made of a Darrieus VAWT with H-rotor design and is analyzed using CFD. An Iso-surface mesh is made on the model with a cylindrical air-filled domain and a κ-ε turbulence model is applied to study the effects of the wind-and-turbine blade interaction. The domain inlet indicates wind velocity; outlet is set to zero atmospheric gauge pressure and the pressure distribution across the turbine blade wall is measured. The top-bottom walls of the domain are not part of the interaction. The study shows that the NACA0012 blade profile fares better than the other profiles across the range of wind velocities. However, it is less efficient with an increase in blade pitch angle for the same value of velocity. NACA0015 blade profile gives good performance when it has a zero pitch angle for intermediate and high wind velocities.