Optimized Small Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT), Phase I

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.

Author(s):  
MERAD ◽  
Asmae BOUANANI ◽  
Mama BOUCHAOUR

The use of wind energy has no harmful effects on the environment. This makes it a clean energy that is a real alternative to the problem of nuclear waste management and greenhouse gas emissions. Vertical axis wind turbines have prospective advantages in the field of domestic applications, because they have proven effectual in urban areas where wind flow conditions are intermittent, omnidirectional, unsteady and turbulent. The wind cannot ensure a regular energy supply without optimising the aerodynamics of the blades. This article presents a reminder about wind energy and wind turbines, especially the VAWT type wind turbines and also gives a presentation on the aerodynamic side of VAWT by studying the geometry and aerodynamic characteristics of the blade profiles with the acting forces and also the explanation of the DMS multiple flow tube model. This work also gives the different simulation methods to optimize the behaviour of the blades from the selected NACA profiles; the analysis first goes through the design of the blades by the design and simulation software Qblade which is used to calculate also the forces on the blade and the coefficients of lift, drag and fineness. At the end of this article we have the DMS simulation of the VAWT turbines, by determining the power coefficient and the power collected by the turbine to select the wind turbine adapted to a well characterized site.


Author(s):  
Samyak Jain ◽  
Gautam Singh ◽  
Varun Yadav ◽  
Rahul Bisht

Currently, many countries are racing towards switching to clean energy resource (1). Among the options available Solar and Wind are two viable options that are economically feasible. Each day a new development is helping in bringing down the cost of energy extracted from these sources. With currently available technologies, solar energy is almost as expensive as the energy generated from burning coal, whereas wind energy is still slightly expensive (2). However, wind energy could be made cheaper by the use of a vertical axis wind turbine (3). However, structure is a major factor that is holding back the development of VAWTs with better efficiency (4). The efficiency of a VAWT depends upon its aspect ratio. Aspect Ratio is the ratio of the height of the blade to the diameter of the turbine. The lower the aspect ratio, the higher the efficiency (5). However, decreasing the AR would mean either increasing the diameter of the turbine or the height of the blade. In either case, the bending moment would increase on the struts, that connect the blades to the shaft. In this paper we propose, struts with airfoil cross-section. This is because, the lift generated by airfoil struts acts as additional support for the blade, thus increasing our ability to work at lower aspect ratios.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 168781401879954
Author(s):  
Soo-Yong Cho ◽  
Sang-Kyu Choi ◽  
Jin-Gyun Kim ◽  
Chong-Hyun Cho

In order to augment the performance of vertical axis wind turbines, wind power towers have been used because they increase the frontal area. Typically, the wind power tower is installed as a circular column around a vertical axis wind turbine because the vertical axis wind turbine should be operated in an omnidirectional wind. As a result, the performance of the vertical axis wind turbine depends on the design parameters of the wind power tower. An experimental study was conducted in a wind tunnel to investigate the optimal design parameters of the wind power tower. Three different sizes of guide walls were applied to test with various wind power tower design parameters. The tested vertical axis wind turbine consisted of three blades of the NACA0018 profile and its solidity was 0.5. In order to simulate the operation in omnidirectional winds, the wind power tower was fabricated to be rotated. The performance of the vertical axis wind turbine was severely varied depending on the azimuthal location of the wind power tower. Comparison of the performance of the vertical axis wind turbine was performed based on the power coefficient obtained by averaging for the one periodic azimuth angle. The optimal design parameters were estimated using the results obtained under equal experimental conditions. When the non-dimensional inner gap was 0.3, the performance of the vertical axis wind turbine was better than any other gaps.


Author(s):  
David MacPhee ◽  
Asfaw Beyene

Blade pitch control has been extremely important for the development of Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs), allowing for greater efficiency over a wider range of operational regimes when compared to rigid-bladed designs. For Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs), blade pitching is inherently more difficult due to a dependence of attack angle on turbine armature location, shaft speed, and wind speed. As a result, there have been very few practical pitch control schemes put forward for VAWTs, which may be a major reason why this wind turbine type enjoys a much lower market share as compared to HAWTs. To alleviate this issue, the flexible, straight-bladed vertical-axis turbine is presented, which can passively adapt its geometry to local aerodynamic loadings and serves as a low-cost blade pitch control strategy increasing efficiency and startup capabilities. Using two-dimensional fluid-structure action simulations, this novel concept is compared to an identical rigid one and is proven to be superior in terms of power coefficient due to decreased torque minima. Moreover, due to the flexible nature of the blades, the morphing turbine achieves less severe oscillatory loadings. As a result, the morphing blade design is expected to not only increase efficiency but also system longevity without additional system costs usually associated with active pitch control schemes.


Author(s):  
Akiyoshi Iida ◽  
Akisato Mizuno ◽  
Kyoji Kamemoto

Unsteady flow field and flow induced noise of vertical axis wind turbine are numerically investigated. The flow field is numerically calculated by the vortex method with core-spreading model. This simulation obtains aerodynamic performance and aerodynamic forces. Aerodynamic noise is also simulated by using Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings equation with compact body and low-Mach number assumptions. Tip speed of rotor blades are not so high, then the contribution of the moving sound source is smaller than that of the dipole sound source. Since the maximum power coefficient of VAWT can be obtained at lower tip-speed ratio compared to the conventional, horizontal axis wind turbines, the aerodynamic noise from vertical axis wind turbine is smaller than that of the conventional wind turbines at the same aerodynamic performance. This result indicates that the vertical axis wind turbines are useful to develop low-noise wind turbines.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Su ◽  
Haoran Meng ◽  
Jia Guo ◽  
Timing Qu ◽  
Liping Lei

Abstract Wind energy has attracted worldwide attention as a pollution-free and widely distributed renewable energy source. Increasing the power density by optimizing the arrangement of wind turbines has been a popular field of research in recent years. In the present work, a systematic study on the influence of array configuration on vertical axis wind turbines is made through wind tunnel experiments. Firstly, the power performance of an isolated vertical axis wind turbine at different tip speed ratios is tested as a benchmark of comparison. Multiple situations of two-turbine configurations are then tested and the results are compared with the isolated wind turbine. The power coefficient of the turbine pair increases by 34% when the turbines are 2.4 rotor diameters apart and rotate in the same direction. In the counter-rotating co-leeward case, it is demonstrated that the turbine pairs will have a positive effect on each other when they are separated by 2.1 rotor diameters to 2.4 rotor diameters. The lateral spacing between the counter-rotating co-windward turbine pair should be greater than 1.5 rotor diameters to avoid turbulence interference between the rotors.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ussama Ali ◽  
Mhd Modrek ◽  
Md Islam ◽  
Isam Janajreh

Abstract Wind energy has proved to be a promising sustainable energy source; the energy of wind has been harvested not only for decades but for centuries. It was in the late 19th century that wind energy was used to directly obtain electrical power. Horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) are widely used in commercial applications but recently a lot of research is being done on vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) to improve their operation and efficiency. Absence of yaw mechanism, low noise emission, and low manufacturing, installation and maintenance costs are some of the prominent advantages of VAWT over HAWT. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of different blade airfoils and the influence of blade pitching in the operation of VAWT. Blade pitching is widely used in HAWTs and has proven to be very advantageous in terms of output power, but the effect of blade pitching on VAWT has not been widely studied and much less practically implied due to complex functional mechanism. VAWTs with fixed pitch experience continuously varying angle of attack which reduces the power generation. Airfoils tested in this study, for their performance on a VAWT rotor, are Joukowski airfoil (J-15), NACA0012 and NACA4312, furthermore, passive blade pitching was applied to analyze the effect of inoffset and out-offset blade pitching on the performance of the turbine. High fidelity Navier-Stokes computational flow models were applied for the analysis. A 2D unsteady CFD model was constructed to perform the simulations. Power and torque coefficients were evaluated over a varying range of tip speed ratios and a strong correlation of these coefficients was seen with different input parameters, such as airfoil shape, turbine solidity and tip speed ratios. Out-offset blade pitch angles showed better results than in-offset blade pitch angles.


Inventions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Dabachi ◽  
Abdellatif Rahmouni ◽  
Eugen Rusu ◽  
Otmane Bouksour

Growing energy demand is causing a significant decrease in the world’s hydrocarbon stock in addition to the pollution of our ecosystem. Based on this observation, the search for alternative sorts of energy to fossil fuels is being increasingly explored and exploited. Wind energy is experiencing a very important development, and it offers a very profitable opportunity for exploitation since the wind is always available and inexhaustible. Several technical solutions exist to exploit wind energy, such as floating vertical axis wind turbines (F-VAWTs), which provide an attractive and cost-effective solution for exploiting higher resources of offshore wind in deep water areas. Recently, the use of the Darrieus vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) offshore has attracted increased interest because it offers significant advantages over horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs). In this context, this article presents a new concept of floating Darrieus-type straight-bladed turbine with three-stage rotors. A double-multiple stream tube (DMST) model is used for aerodynamic simulations to examine several critical parameters, including, solidity turbine, number of blades, rotor radius, aspect ratio, wind velocity, and rotor height. This study also allows to identify a low solidity turbine (σ = 0.3), offering the best aerodynamic performance, while a two-bladed design is recommended. Moreover, the results also indicate the interest of a variable radius rotor, as well as the variation of the height as a function of the wind speed on the aerodynamic efficiency.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5780
Author(s):  
Mohammad Hassan Ranjbar ◽  
Behnam Rafiei ◽  
Seyyed Abolfazl Nasrazadani ◽  
Kobra Gharali ◽  
Madjid Soltani ◽  
...  

Efforts to increase the power output of wind turbines include Diffuser Augmented Wind Turbines (DAWT) or a shroud for the rotor of a wind turbine. The selected duct has three main components: a nozzle, a diffuser, and a flange. The combined effect of these components results in enriched upstream velocity for the rotor installed in the throat of the duct. To obtain the maximum velocity in the throat of the duct, the optimum angles of the three parts have been analyzed. A code was developed to allow all the numerical steps including changing the geometries, generating the meshes, and setting up the numerical solver simultaneously. Finally, the optimum geometry of the duct has been established that allows a doubling of the flow velocity. The flow characteristics inside the duct have also been analyzed in detail. An H-Darrieus Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) has been simulated inside the optimized duct. The results show that the power coefficient of the DAWT can be enhanced up to 2.9 times. Deep dynamic stall phenomena are captured perfectly. The duct advances the leading-edge vortex generation and delays the vortex separation.


Author(s):  
Micha Premkumar Thomai ◽  
Mohan Thangaraj ◽  
Silambarasan Palanivel ◽  
Seralathan Sivamani

The importance of renewable energy has increased continuously in the recent years due to the growth in the energy demand and a decrease in the fossil fuel resources. Harnessing the low rated wind energy is the promising source so that the wind turbine can be used all year round. Deploying sequence of small turbine is efficient than single bigger size turbine in extracting the low rated wind energy. Hence, in this work, sequence of small vertical axis wind turbine is arranged in the tree like structure and named it as wind tree. The vertical axis type of turbine would be able to perform more efficiently at minimum wind velocity. So, the Helical Savonius vertical axis rotor is deployed in the wind tree which gives the relatively high torque and self-starting even at low wind speeds. The main aim of this work is to analyze numerically the cluster of vertical axis wind turbine in order to improve the average output of the wind tree. In this study, the vertical axis turbines are arranged in the branches of the tree at different plane, so that the wake of one turbine will not affect the turbine in the downstream. The numerical simulation has been studied by using commercially available software ANSYS CFX©. The single helical vertical axis wind turbine is fabricated and tested in the open jet wind tunnel and this experimental result is used for validating the numerical results. In addition to the validation, sensitive study for the grid and the turbulence model has been carried out to improve the simulation quality. Vertical axis wind can accept wind from any direction without any yaw mechanism, so the average performance of this type of turbine in cluster is analyzed by changing the flow (α = 0°, 45° and 90°) of the wind turbine cluster. It is observed from this study that the average power coefficient of the cluster of turbine at the flow angle of 45° has better performance than the other pattern. Moreover, its average power coefficient is 2.3 times higher than the isolated vertical axis wind turbine. These results of the cluster simulation are used to develop an efficient wind tree to harness the low rated wind energy.


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