Engineering and Economic Models of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

Author(s):  
Elhadji Alpha A. Bah ◽  
Lakshmi N. Sankar ◽  
Jechiel I. Jagoda

The interest in sustainable forms of energy is being driven by the anticipated scarcity of traditional fossil fuels over the coming decades. There is also a growing concern about the effects of fossil fuel emissions on human health and the environment. Many sources of renewable energy are being researched and implemented for power production. In particular, wind power generation by vertical-axis wind turbines is one of the option often considered. This option offers a robust design because of the relative simplicity of its technology. However, it also presents challenges that are inherent to its very concept. These systems suffer from dynamic stall, noticeably one of the main causes of the loss of performance. A dual-element concept is proposed as a way of alleviating the losses due to the dynamic stall. An economic analysis is done to establish the economic viability of the model. The Great Coast of Senegal is selected as a site of operation in this study.

AIAA Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Dyachuk ◽  
Anders Goude ◽  
Hans Bernhoff

Author(s):  
Mazharul Islam ◽  
M. Ruhul Amin ◽  
David S.-K. Ting ◽  
Amir Fartaj

Unlike the conventional aerodynamic applications, the straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) operate in a circular motion and encounter a wide range of angle of attacks, especially at low tip speed ratios. When the blade angle of attack remains constant or varies slowly with time, it encounters the static stall. However, when the angle of attack changes rapidly with time, it experiences the dynamic stall which is far more difficult to analyze and predict than the static stall. Furthermore, the blade/blade wake interaction in straight-bladed VAWTs also presents modeling problem. In this paper, all of these aforesaid aerodynamic factors are discussed. It was found that these factors need special attention for designing a self-starting straight-bladed VAWT with optimum performance. A numerical method based on Cascade model, proposed by Hirsch and Mandal [1], that gives reasonable correlation with the experimental data available has been used. The effects of dynamic stall and flow curvature on the performance of a straight-bladed VAWT have been analyzed. It is observed from the analysis that aerodynamic forces due to dynamic stall are higher than those due to static stall. As a result, for the performance prediction of straight-bladed VAWTs, especially for the local forces, there can be substantial differences between the experimental data and the calculated values unless the dynamic stall effect is added.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pier Francesco Melani ◽  
Francesco Balduzzi ◽  
Alessandro Bianchini

Abstract The Actuator Line Method (ALM), combining a lumped-parameter representation of the rotating blades with the CFD resolution of the turbine flow field, stands out among the modern simulation methods for Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) as probably the most interesting compromise between accuracy and computational cost. Being however a method relying on tabulated coefficients for modeling the blade-flow interaction, the correct implementation of the sub-models to account for higher order aerodynamic effects is pivotal. Inter alia, the introduction of a dynamic stall model is extremely challenging. As a matter of fact, two main issues arise: first, it is important to extrapolate a correct value of the angle of attack (AoA) from the CFD solved flow field; second, the AoA history required as an input to calculate the rate of dynamic variation of the angle itself is characterized by a low signal-to-noise ratio, leading to severe numerical oscillations of the solution. In the study, a robust procedure to improve the quality of the AoA signal extracted from an ALM simulation is introduced. The procedure combines a novel method for sampling of the inflow velocity from the numerical flow field with a low-pass filtering of the corresponding angle of attack signal based on Cubic Spline Smoothing (CSS). Such procedure has been implemented in the Actuator Line module developed by the authors for the commercial ANSYS® FLUENT® solver. In order to verify the reliability of the proposed methodology, two-dimensional unsteady RANS simulations of a test 2-blade Darrieus H-rotor, for which high-fidelity experimental and numerical blade loading data were available, have been eventually performed for a selected turbine unstable operation point.


1995 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. F. Abdel Azim El-Sayed ◽  
C. Hirsch ◽  
R. Derdelinckx

A computing package that combines finite element methods for evaluating the resonance frequencies and modes of turbine subcomponents (blade, tower and shaft) together with the aerodynamic calculations for forces and moments taking into consideration the dynamic stall as well as the dynamic response is developed. This method was applied to a realistic VAWT; namely; the PIONEER I built in the Netherlands by Fokker company. A reasonable agreement between the calculated and field results was predicted.


1995 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Allet ◽  
I. Paraschivoiu

The present paper describes a numerical method, aimed to simulate the flow field of vertical-axis wind turbines, based on the solution of the steady, incompressible, laminar Navier-Stokes equations in cylindrical coordinates. The flow equations, written in conservation law form, are discretized using a control volume approach on a staggered grid. The effect of the spinning blades is simulated by distributing a time-averaged source terms in the ring of control volumes that lie in the path of turbine blades. The numerical procedure used here, based on the control volume approach, is the widely known “SIMPLER” algorithm. The resulting algebraic equations are solved by the TriDiagonal Matrix Algorithm (TDMA) in the r- and z-directions and the Cyclic TDMA in the 0-direction. The indicial model is used to simulate the effect of dynamic stall at low tip-speed ratio values. The viscous model, developed here, is used to predict aerodynamic loads and performance for the Sandia 17-m wind turbine. Predictions of the viscous model are compared with both experimental data and results from the CARDAAV aerodynamic code based on the Double-Multiple Streamtube Model. According to the experimental results, the analysis of local and global performance predictions by the 3D viscous model including dynamic stall effects shows a good improvement with respect to previous 2D models.


2018 ◽  
Vol 841 ◽  
pp. 746-766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abel-John Buchner ◽  
Julio Soria ◽  
Damon Honnery ◽  
Alexander J. Smits

Vertical axis wind turbine blades are subject to rapid, cyclical variations in angle of attack and relative airspeed which can induce dynamic stall. This phenomenon poses an obstacle to the greater implementation of vertical axis wind turbines because dynamic stall can reduce turbine efficiency and induce structural vibrations and noise. This study seeks to provide a more comprehensive description of dynamic stall in vertical axis wind turbines, with an emphasis on understanding its parametric dependence and scaling behaviour. This problem is of practical relevance to vertical axis wind turbine design but the inherent coupling of the pitching and velocity scales in the blade kinematics makes this problem of more broad fundamental interest as well. Experiments are performed using particle image velocimetry in the vicinity of the blades of a straight-bladed gyromill-type vertical axis wind turbine at blade Reynolds numbers of between 50 000 and 140 000, tip speed ratios between $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=1$ to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=5$, and dimensionless pitch rates of $0.10\leqslant K_{c}\leqslant 0.20$. The effect of these factors on the evolution, strength and timing of vortex shedding from the turbine blades is determined. It is found that tip speed ratio alone is insufficient to describe the circulation production and vortex shedding behaviour from vertical axis wind turbine blades, and a scaling incorporating the dimensionless pitch rate is proposed.


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