scholarly journals Computational Optimization of Adaptive Hybrid Darrieus Turbine: Part 1

Fluids ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Palanisamy Mohan Kumar ◽  
Mohan Ram Surya ◽  
Krishnamoorthi Sivalingam ◽  
Teik-Cheng Lim ◽  
Seeram Ramakrishna ◽  
...  

Darrieus-type Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT) are promising for small scale decentralized power generation because of their unique advantages such as simple design, insensitive to wind direction, reliability, and ease of maintenance. Despite these positive aspects, poor self-starting capability and low efficiency in weak and unsteady winds deteriorate further development. Adaptive Hybrid Darrieus Turbine (AHDT) was proposed by the author in the past study as a potential solution to enhance low wind speed characteristics. The objective of the current research is to optimize the parameters of AHDT. AHDT integrates a dynamically varying Savonius rotor with a Darrieus rotor. A fully detailed 2D numerical study employing Reynold-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) is carried out to investigate the impact of the Darrieus rotor diameter (DR) on the Savonius rotor (DT) with regard to hybrid turbine performance. The power coefficient of the Darrieus rotor is evaluated when the Savonius rotor is in the closed condition (cylinder) of various diameters. The influence of Reynolds number (Re) on the torque coefficient is examined. Power loss of 58.3% and 25% is reported for DR/DT ratio of 1.5 and 2 respectively for AHDT with solidity 0.5 at 9 m/s. The flow interaction between the Savonius rotor in closed configuration reveals the formation of von Karman vortices that interact with Darrieus blades resulting in flow detachment. An optimum diametrical ratio (DR/DT) of 3 is found to yield the maximum power coefficient of the Darrieus rotor.

Author(s):  
Gwani Mohammed ◽  
Mamuda Buhari ◽  
Umar Muhammed Kangiwa ◽  
John Danyaro

Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) have attracted a lot of attention recently as an efficient tool in harnessing wind energy; however these types of wind turbine are faced with some challenges which affect their overall performance. The Darrieus rotor has difficulty to self-start by itself while the Savonius rotor has low efficiency. The performance of these turbines can be improved by combining the two VAWTs as one system. This paper presents the design of a hybrid VAWTs turbine. The Hybrid VAWTs combines the Darrieus rotor and the Savonius rotor as a single system to produce a high starting torque and enhanced efficiency. The Savonius rotor is placed at the centre of the three vertical blades of the Darrieus H-rotor to form the hybrid VAWTs. The hybrid VAWT was tested at four different wind speed i.e. V = 4.80 m/s, 4.50 m/s, 4.30 m/s and 3.90 m/s respectively. The performance of the hybrid VAWT was compared with the conventional straight bladed VAWT under similar experimental conditions. The obtained results showed that there is substantial improvement in the self-starting ability and coefficient of power (Cp). At V = 4.80 m/s, the Cp values for hybrid VAWT increased by 92% compared to straight bladed H-rotor VAWT. Similar improvement was also observed at wind speed of V = 4.50 m/s, 4.30 m/s, and 3.90 m/s where the Cp values increases by 71%, 10%, and 67% respectively compared to the straight bladed H-rotor.


2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amin A. Mohammed ◽  
Ahmet Z. Sahin ◽  
Hassen M. Ouakad

Abstract A double multiple streamtube model coupled with variable pitch methodology is used to analyze the performance characteristics of a small-scale straight-bladed Darrieus type vertical axis wind turbine (SB-VAWT). The numerical study revealed that a fixed pitch of −2.5 deg could greatly enhance the performance of the wind turbine. However, no improvement is observed in the starting torque capacity. Furthermore, the performance of upwind and downwind zones has been investigated, and it is found that the VAWT starting capacity is improved by increasing/decreasing the pitch angle upwind/downwind of the turbine. To optimize the performance, four cases of variable pitch angle schemes of sinusoidal nature were examined. The parameters of the sinusoidal functions were optimized using differential evolution (DE) algorithm with different cost functions. The results showed improvement in the power coefficient, yet with low starting capacity enhancement. Among the objective functions used in DE algorithm, the negative of the average power coefficient is found to lead to the best starting capacity with moderate peak power coefficient.


2012 ◽  
Vol 499 ◽  
pp. 259-264
Author(s):  
Qi Yao ◽  
Ying Xue Yao ◽  
Liang Zhou ◽  
S.Y. Zheng

This paper presents a simulation study of an H-type vertical axis wind turbine. Two dimensional CFD model using sliding mesh technique was generated to help understand aerodynamics performance of this wind turbine. The effect of the pith angle on H-type vertical axis wind turbine was studied based on the computational model. As a result, this wind turbine could get the maximum power coefficient when pitch angle adjusted to a suited angle, furthermore, the effects of pitch angle and azimuth angle on single blade were investigated. The results will provide theoretical supports on study of variable pitch of wind turbine.


Author(s):  
Nur Alom ◽  
Ujjwal K. Saha

The Savonius rotor appears to be particularly promising for the small-scale applications because of its design simplicity, good starting ability, and insensitivity to wind directions. There has been a growing interest in recent times to harness wind energy in an efficient manner by developing newer blade profiles of Savonius rotor. The overlap ratio (OR), one of the important geometric parameters, plays a crucial role in the turbine performance. In a recent study, an elliptical blade profile with a sectional cut angle (θ) of 47.5° has demonstrated its superior performance when set at an OR = 0.20. However, this value of OR is ideal for a semicircular profile, and therefore, requires further investigation to arrive at the optimum overlap ratio for the elliptical profile. In view of this, the present study attempts to make a systemic numerical study to arrive at the optimum OR of the elliptical profile having sectional cut angle, θ = 47.5°. The 2D unsteady simulation is carried out around the elliptical profile considering various overlap ratios in the range of 0.0 to 0.30. The continuity, unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations and two equation eddy viscosity SST (Shear Stress transport) k-ω model are solved by using the commercial finite volume method (FVM) based solver ANSYS Fluent. The torque and power coefficients are calculated as a function of tip speed ratio (TSR) and at rotating conditions. The total pressure, velocity magnitude and turbulence intensity contours are obtained and analyzed to arrive at the intended objective. The numerical simulation demonstrates an improved performance of the elliptical profile at an OR = 0.15.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-415
Author(s):  
H. Abu-Thuraia ◽  
C. Aygun ◽  
M. Paraschivoiu ◽  
M.A. Allard

Advances in wind power and tidal power have matured considerably to offer clean and sustainable energy alternatives. Nevertheless, distributed small-scale energy production from wind in urban areas has been disappointing because of very low efficiencies of the turbines. A novel wind turbine design — a seven-bladed Savonius vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) that is horizontally oriented inside a diffuser shroud and mounted on top of a building — has been shown to overcome the drawback of low efficiency. The objective this study was to analyze the performance of this novel wind turbine design for different wind directions and for different guide vanes placed at the entrance of the diffuser shroud. The flow field over the turbine and guide vanes was analyzed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on a 3D grid for multiple tip-speed ratios (TSRs). Four wind directions and three guide-vane angles were analyzed. The wind-direction analysis indicates that the power coefficient decreases to about half when the wind is oriented at 45° to the main axis of the turbine. The analysis of the guide vanes indicates a maximum power coefficient of 0.33 at a vane angle of 55°.


2015 ◽  
Vol 785 ◽  
pp. 310-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norzanah Rosmin ◽  
N.A. Rahman ◽  
A.H. Mustaamal

Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) are known as the most suitable wind turbine for small-scale electrical generation. There are many types of VAWTs and each of it has different performances and efficiency. In this work, three types of VAWT systems (Savo-B2, Savo-B4 and Giro-B3) were designed, constructed and tested to investigate the amount of electrical power that could be generated under several constant wind speeds. The blade rotors were designed and built using 2 mm thickness of aluminum plate. The tip speed ratios, power coefficients, blade rotations for each blade rotor and the simplicity of the proposed designs were studied via an experimental setup. The experimental work demonstrates that Savo-B2 provides the highest power coefficient which is up to 0.32. Meanwhile, Giro-B3 offers the fastest rotational blade speed, up to 20.53 rad/s, among the three designs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Alom ◽  
Ujjwal K. Saha

The design and development of wind turbines is increasing throughout the world to offer electricity without paying much to the global warming. The Savonius wind turbine rotor, or simply the Savonius rotor, is a drag-based device that has a relatively low efficiency. A high negative torque produced by the returning blade is a major drawback of this rotor. Despite having a low efficiency, its design simplicity, low cost, easy installation, good starting ability, relatively low operating speed, and independency to wind direction are its main rewards. With the goal of improving its power coefficient (CP), a considerable amount of investigation has been reported in the past few decades, where various design modifications are made by altering the influencing parameters. Concurrently, various augmentation techniques have also been used to improve the rotor performance. Such augmenters reduce the negative torque and improve the self-starting capability while maintaining a high rotational speed of the rotor. The CP of the conventional Savonius rotors lie in the range of 0.12–0.18, however, with the use of augmenters, it can reach up to 0.52 with added design complexity. This paper attempts to give an overview of the various augmentation techniques used in Savonius rotor over the last four decades. Some of the key findings with the use of these techniques have been addressed and makes an attempt to highlight the future direction of research.


Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1870 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lidong Zhang ◽  
Kaiqi Zhu ◽  
Junwei Zhong ◽  
Ling Zhang ◽  
Tieliu Jiang ◽  
...  

The central shaft is an important and indispensable part of a small scale urban vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). Normally, it is often operated at the same angular velocity as the wind turbine. The shedding vortices released by the rotating shaft have a negative effect on the blades passing the wake of the wind shaft. The objective of this study is to explore the influence of the wake of rotating shaft on the performance of the VAWT under different operational and physical parameters. The results show that when the ratio of the shaft diameter to the wind turbine diameter (α) is 9%, the power loss of the wind turbine in one revolution increases from 0% to 25% relative to that of no-shaft wind turbine (this is a numerical experiment for which the shaft of the VAWT is removed in order to study the interactions between the shaft and blade). When the downstream blades pass through the wake of the shaft, the pressure gradient of the suction side and pressure side is changed, and an adverse effect is also exerted on the lift generation in the blades. In addition, α = 5% is a critical value for the rotating shaft wind turbine (the lift-drag ratio trend of the shaft changes differently). In order to figure out the impacts of four factors; namely, tip speed ratios (TSRs), α, turbulence intensity (TI), and the relative surface roughness value (ks/ds) on the performance of a VAWT system, the Taguchi method is employed in this study. The influence strength order of these factors is featured by TSRs > ks/ds > α > TI. Furthermore, within the range we have analyzed in this study, the optimal power coefficient (Cp) occurred under the condition of TSR = 4, α = 5%, ks/ds = 1 × 10−2, and TI = 8%.


Author(s):  
N. Cristobal Uzarraga-Rodriguez ◽  
A. Gallegos-Mun˜oz ◽  
J. Manuel Riesco A´vila

A numerical analysis of a rooftop vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) for applications in urban area is presented. The numerical simulations were developed to study the flow field through the turbine rotor to analyze the aerodynamic performance characteristics of the device. Three different blade numbers of wind turbine are studied, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. Each one of the models was built in a 3D computational model. The effects generated in the performance of turbines by the numbers of blades are considered. A Sliding Mesh Model (SMM) capability was used to present the dimensionless form of coefficient power and coefficient moment of the wind turbine as a function of the wind velocity and the rotor rotational speed. The numerical study was developed in CFD using FLUENT®. The results show the aerodynamic performance for each configuration of wind turbine rotor. In the cases of Rooftop rotor the power coefficient increases as the blade number increases, while in the case of Savonius rotor the power coefficient decrease as the blades number increases.


2012 ◽  
Vol 614-615 ◽  
pp. 480-484
Author(s):  
Zhi Peng Tang ◽  
Ying Xue Yao ◽  
Liang Zhou ◽  
Jin Ming Wu ◽  
Bo Wen Yu

This paper analyzed the advantages of traditional Savonius (S-type) turbine and the reasons of its low efficiency, proposed a new type of turbine with self-rotating blades and surrounded by a rectifier, and studied the aerodynamic performance by numerical simulations. The turbine is composed of a rectifier and a rotor, the rectifier consists by straight and arc segments which can accelerate the wind speed and adjust the inflow wind angle. The self-rotating blade can reduce the impacted area acting on the leeward blade by wind and arm of the impact torque, therefore reduces the resistant torque of the blade, and the driving torque acting on the windward blade is almost the same with traditional S-type turbine, which can increase the overall driving torque. The result shows that the new turbine has the advantages as below: wide range of wind speed for effective working, high power coefficient (Cp), suitable for low wind speed aera etc. Although the flow field in S-type turbine is complex separating flow, the performance of the turbine proposed in this paper is improved and is better than traditional S-type turbine in numerical simulation which is worth for spreading.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document