Study on Performance and Flow Condition of Cross-Flow Wind Turbine With a Symmetrical Casing

Author(s):  
Junichiro Fukutomi ◽  
Toru Shigemitsu ◽  
Hiroki Daito

Wind turbine has been attracted as the technology for clean and renewable energy and many kinds of the researches and the developments are performed. Cross-flow wind turbine has a characteristic of good self-starting, low noise and high stability. Therefore, it is expected as the small-sized wind turbine for urban district. But the maximum power coefficient of the cross-flow wind turbine is extremely low as 10%. Wind in an urban region and a coastal place has a prevailing wind of two directions to occur in a specific condition frequently. Then, a casing suitable for this prevailing wind was designed in this research and the effect of the casing was investigated by experimental and numerical analysis. In the experiment, a wind tunnel with a square discharge 500mm×500mm was used and main flow velocity was set as 20m/s to reduce the influence of measurement error on performance. A torque meter, a rotational speed pickup and a motor were assembled with the same axis at low position of a test wind turbine which was set vertically and rotational speed and tip speed ratio were changeable by a rotational speed controller. The casing was set around the cross-flow rotor and flow distribution at the rotor inlet and the outlet was measured by a one-hole pitot tube. The maximum power coefficient was obtained as Cpmax = 0.19 with the casing, however as Cpmax = 0.098 without the casing. And it was clarified that the inlet and the outlet flow condition was improved by the casing. In the present paper, in order to improve the performance of a cross-flow wind turbine, a symmetrical casing suitable for the prevailing wind of two directions is proposed. Then performance and internal flow condition of the cross-flow wind turbine with the casing is clarified. Furthermore, the influence of a symmetrical casing on performance is discussed and the relation between flow condition and performance is considered.

2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Junichiro Fukutomi ◽  
Toru Shigemitsu ◽  
Hiroki Daito

A cross-flow wind turbine has a high torque coefficient at a low tip speed ratio. Therefore, it is a good candidate for use as a self-starting turbine. Furthermore, it has low noise and excellent stability; therefore, it has attracted attention from the viewpoint of applications as a small wind turbine for an urban district. However, its maximum power coefficient is extremely low (10%) as compared to that of other small wind turbines. Prevailing winds in two directions often blow in urban and coastal regions. Therefore, in order to improve the performance and the flow condition of the cross-flow rotor, a casing suitable for this sort of prevailing wind conditions is designed in this research and the effect of the casing is investigated by experimental and numerical analysis. In the experiment, a wind tunnel with a square discharge is used and main flow velocity is set as 20 m/s. A torque meter, a rotational speed pickup, and a motor are assembled with the same axis as the test wind turbine and the tip speed ratio is changeable by a rotational speed controller. The casing is set around the cross-flow rotor and flow distribution at the rotor inlet and the outlet is measured by a one-hole pitot tube. The maximum power coefficient is obtained as Cpmax = 0.19 with the casing, however Cpmax = 0.098 without the casing. It is clear that the inlet and the outlet flow condition is improved by the casing. In the present paper, in order to improve the performance of a cross-flow wind turbine, a symmetrical casing suitable for prevailing winds in two directions is proposed. Then, the performance and the internal flow condition of the cross-flow wind turbine with the casing are clarified. Furthermore, the influence of the symmetrical casing on performance is discussed and the relation between the flow condition and performance is considered.


Author(s):  
Junichiro Fukutomi ◽  
Toru Shigemitsu ◽  
Masaaki Toyohara

A cross-flow wind turbine has a high torque coefficient at a low tip speed ratio. Therefore, it is a good candidate for use as a self-starting turbine. Furthermore, it has low noise and excellent stability; therefore, it has attracted attention from the viewpoint of applications as a small wind turbine for an urban district. However, its maximum power coefficient is extremely low (10%) as compared to that of other small wind turbines. In order to improve the performance and the flow condition of the cross-flow rotor, symmetrical casing with a nozzle and a diffuser are proposed and experimental research with the symmetrical casing is conducted. The maximum power coefficient is obtained as Cpmax = 0.17 for casing and Cpmax = 0.098 in the case without the casing. In the present study, power characteristics of the cross-flow rotor and those of the symmetrical casing with the nozzle and the diffuser are investigated. Then, the performance and internal flow patterns of the cross-flow wind turbine with the symmetrical casings are clarified. After that, the effect of the side boards set on the symmetrical casing is discussed on the basis of the analysis results.


Author(s):  
Kazuki Takeuchi ◽  
Junichiro Fukutomi ◽  
Hidetoshi Kodani ◽  
Hironori Horiguchi

The wind turbine has become more popular in recent years, but on the other hand, the developments of small wind-turbine have been legging behind. Because, the energy density of wind is small, since the efficiency of the main part of a wind turbine is very low. The construction costs become comparatively high-priced. Then, the main part of this subject is to show that, by collecting and sucking out more winds, a wind turbine is made to pass many winds and the new cross-flow wind turbine that increases an output coefficient is proposed. The cross-flow wind turbine has high torque and low speed characteristics and the structure are very simple. So, it can be used in a large wind velocity region. However, even if the power coefficient is high, it is about 10%. The purpose of this paper is to show how we can improve the power coefficient by applying a casing, which has a nozzle and a diffuser. This research was made to clear up fundamental characteristics of the interaction between outer flow and inner flow. Three kinds of cross-flow wind turbines were designed. The nozzle and diffuser have been designed suitable for the performance of wind turbine. The flow simulations by CFD have been carried out for various types of casings at 20 m/s with Fluent Ver5.0. All Wind tunnel experiments were performed at 20m/s. The case of casing 2, which have plate arranged near the separation point of cylinder, also experimented. The rotor that is settled in the casing 1 shows a larger power coefficient than the case without a casing. The casing of the cross-flow turbine makes a pressure difference between inflow and outflow. The pressure difference increases the mass flow rate. Therefore much more wind passes through into the cross-flow turbine. In this experiment, the power coefficient increased 1.5 times in the case with casing. A still higher output coefficient could be obtained in the case where it is shown by the casing 2.


2012 ◽  
Vol 215-216 ◽  
pp. 1323-1326
Author(s):  
Ming Wei Xu ◽  
Jian Jun Qu ◽  
Han Zhang

A small vertical axis wind turbine with wind speed self-adapting was designed. The diameter and height of the turbine were both 0.7m. It featured that the blades were composed of movable and fixed blades, and the opening and closing of the movable blades realized the wind speed self-adapting. Aerodynamic performance of this new kind turbine was tested in a simple wind tunnel. Then the self-starting and power coefficient of the turbine were studied. The turbine with load could reliably self-start and operate stably even when the wind velocity was only 3.6 m/s. When the wind velocity was 8 m/s and the load torque was 0.1Nm, the movable blades no longer opened and the wind turbine realized the conversion from drag mode to lift mode. With the increase of wind speed, the maximum power coefficient of the turbine also improves gradually. Under 8 m/s wind speed, the maximum power coefficient of the turbine reaches to 12.26%. The experimental results showed that the new turbine not only improved the self-starting ability of the lift-style turbine, but also had a higher power coefficient in low tip speed ratio.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Zilberman ◽  
Abdelaziz Abu Sbaih ◽  
Ibrahim Hadad

Abstract Wind energy has become an important resource for the growing demand for clean energy. In 2020 wind energy provided more than 6% of the global electricity demand. It is expected to reach 7% at the end of 2021. The installation growth rate of small wind turbines, though, is relatively slow. The reasons we are interested in the small vertical axis wind turbines are their low noise, environmentally friendly, low installation cost, and capable of being rooftop-mounted. The main goal of the present study is an optimization process towards achieving the optimal cost-effective vertical wind turbine. Thirty wind turbine models were tested under the same conditions in an Azrieli 30 × 30 × 90 cm low-speed wind tunnel at 107,000 Reynolds number. The different types of models were obtained by parametric variations of five basic models, maintaining the same aspect ratio but varying the number of bucket phases, the orientation angles, and the gaps between the vanes. The best performing turbine model was made of one phase with two vanes of non-symmetric bipolynomial profiles that exhibited 0.2 power coefficient, relative to 0.16 and 0.13 that were obtained for symmetrical polynomial and the original Savonius type turbines, respectively. Free rotation, static forces and moments, and dynamic moments and power were measured for the sake of comparison and explanation for the variations in performances of different types of turbines. CFD calculations were used to understand the forces and moment behaviors of the optimized turbine.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (03) ◽  
pp. 352-368
Author(s):  
Hazem Ali Abdel Karim ◽  
Ahmed Reda El-Baz ◽  
Nabil Abdel Aziz Mahmoud ◽  
Ashraf Mostafa Hamed

This study investigates the aerodynamic performance of wind turbines aiming to maximize the power extracted from the wind. The study is focusing on the effect of introducing a second rotor to the main rotor of the wind turbine in what is called a dual rotor wind turbine (DRWT).  The numerical study took place on the performance of small-scale model of wind turbine of 0.9 m diameter using S826 airfoil. Both the Co-rotating and Counter rotating configurations were investigated at different tip speed ratios (TSR) and compared with the performance of the single rotor wind turbine (SRWT). Many parameters were studied for dual rotor turbines. These include the spacing between the two rotors, the pitch angle of the rear rotor and the rotational speed of ratio rear to front rotor. Three-dimensional simulations performed and employed using CFD simulations with Multi Reference Frame (MRF) technique. The Co Rotating Wind Turbine (CWT) and Counter Rotating Wind Turbine (CRWT) found to have better performance compared to that of the SRWT with an increase ranging from 12 to 14% in peak power coefficient. Moreover, the effect of changing the pitch angle of the rear rotor on the overall performance found to be of a negligible effect between angles 0⁰ until 2⁰ degrees tilting toward the front rotor. On the other hand, the ratio of rotational speed of the rear rotor to the front rotor found to cause a further increase in the peak performance of the CWT and CRWT ranging from 3 to 5%.


2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahim Hassanzadeh ◽  
Milad Mohammadnejad ◽  
Sajad Mostafavi

Abstract Savonius turbines are one of the old and cost-effective turbines which extract the wind energy by the drag force. Nowadays, they use in urban areas to generate electricity due to their simple structure, ease of maintenance, and acceptable power output under a low wind speed. However, their efficiency is low and the improvement of their performance is necessary to increase the total power output. This paper compares four various blade profiles in a two-blade conventional Savonius wind turbine. The ratios of blade diameter to the blade depth of s/d = 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 1 are tested under different free-wind speeds of 3, 5, and 7 m/s and tip speed ratios (TSRs) in the range from 0.2 to 1.2. It is found that the profile of blades in a Savonius rotor plays a considerable role in power characteristics. Also, regardless of blades profile and free-wind speed, the maximum power coefficient develops in TSR = 0.8. In addition, increasing the free-wind speed enhances the rotor performance of all cases under consideration. Finally, it is revealed that the rotor with s/d = 0.5 provides maximum power coefficients in all free-wind speeds and TSR values among the rotors under consideration, whereas the rotor with s/d = 1 is the worth cases.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 8050 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohanasundaram Anthony ◽  
Valsalal Prasad ◽  
Kannadasan Raju ◽  
Mohammed H. Alsharif ◽  
Zong Woo Geem ◽  
...  

This work focuses on the design and analysis of wind flow modifier (WFM) modeling of a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) for low wind profile urban areas. A simulation is carried out to examine the performance of an efficient low aspect ratio C-shaped rotor and a proposed involute-type rotor. Further, the WFM model is adapted with a stack of decreased diameter tubes from wind inlet to outlet. It accelerates the wind velocity, and its effectiveness is examined on the involute turbine. Numerical analysis is performed with a realizable K-ε model to monitor the rotor blade performance in the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) ANSYS Fluent software tool. This viscous model with an optimal three-blade rotor with 0.96 m2 rotor swept area is simulated between the turbine rotational speeds ranging from 50 to 250 rpm. The parameters, such as lift–drag coefficient, lift–drag forces, torque, power coefficient, and power at various turbine speeds, are observed. It results in a maximum power coefficient of 0.071 for the drag force rotor and 0.22 for the lift force involute rotor. Moreover, the proposed WFM with an involute rotor extensively improves the maximum power coefficient to an appreciable value of 0.397 at 5 m/s wind speed, and this facilitates efficient design in the low wind profile area.


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