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.