Solidity and Blade Number Effects on a Fixed Pitch, 50 W Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine

Experimental studies were conducted on a modified Rutland 500 horizontal axis wind turbine to evaluate numerical implications of solidity and blade number on the aerodynamic performance. Wind tunnel data were acquired on the turbine with flat-plate, constant-chord blade sets and optimum-designed blade sets to compare with theoretical trends, which had indicated that increased solidity and blade number more than conventional 3-bladed designs, would yield larger power coefficients, CP. The data for the flat plate blades demonstrated power coefficient improvements as the range of solidities was increased from 7% to 27%, but did not indicate performance gains for increased blade numbers. It was also observed that larger pitch angles decreased the optimum tip speed ratio range significantly with a small (5% or less) change in maximum CP. The optimum-design 3-bladed rotors produced an increased experimental CP as solidity increased, with reduced tip speed ratio, at the optimum operating point. As blade number was increased at a constant solidity of 10% from 3 to 12 blades, aerodynamic efficiency and power sharply decreased, contrary to the numerical predictions and the flat plate experimental results. Low Reynolds numbers and wind tunnel blockage effects limit these conclusions and a full scale prototype rotor is being constructed to examine the results of the numerical and experimental studies using a side-by-side comparison with a commercially available wind turbine at the Clarkson University wind-turbine test site.