scholarly journals Double-Multiple Streamtube Analysis of a Flexible Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Fluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Lalit Roy ◽  
Kellis Kincaid ◽  
Roohany Mahmud ◽  
David W. MacPhee

Vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have drawn increased attention for off-grid and off-shore power generation due to inherent advantages over the more popular horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs). Among these advantages are generator locale, omni-directionality and simplistic design. However, one major disadvantage is lower efficiency, which can be alleviated through blade pitching. Since each blade must transit both up- and down-stream each revolution, VAWT blade pitching techniques are not yet commonplace due to increased complexity and cost. Utilizing passively-morphing flexible blades can offer similar results as active pitching, requiring no sensors or actuators, and has shown promise in increasing VAWT performance in select cases. In this study, wind tunnel tests have been conducted with flexible and rigid-bladed NACA 0012 airfoils, in order to provide necessary input data for a Double-Multiple Stream-Tube (DMST) model. The results from this study indicate that a passively-morphing VAWT can achieve a maximum power coefficient (Cp) far exceeding that for a rigid-bladed VAWT CP (18.9% vs. 10%) with reduced normal force fluctuations as much as 6.9%. Operational range of tip-speed ratio also is observed to increase by a maximum of 40.3%.

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.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (16) ◽  
pp. 5140
Author(s):  
Altaf Hussain Rajpar ◽  
Imran Ali ◽  
Ahmad E. Eladwi ◽  
Mohamed Bashir Ali Bashir

Developments in the design of wind turbines with augmentation are advancing around the globe with the goal of generating electricity close to the user in built-up areas. This is certain to help lessen the power generation load as well as distribution and transmission network costs by reducing the distance between the user and the power source. The main objectives driving the development and advancement of vertical-axis wind turbines are increasing the power coefficient and the torque coefficient by optimizing the upstream wind striking on the rotor blades. Unlike horizontal-axis wind turbines, vertical axis turbines generate not only positive torque but also negative torque during operation. The negative torque generated by the returning blade is a key issue for vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) that is counterproductive. Installation of wind deflectors for flow augmentation helps to reduce the negative torque generated by the returning blades as well as enhance the positive torque by creating a diversion in the upstream wind towards the forwarding blade during operation. This paper reviews various designs, experiments, and CFD simulations of wind deflectors reported to date. Optimization techniques for VAWTs incorporating wind deflectors are discussed in detail. The main focus of the review was on the installation position and orientation of the deflectors and their potential contribution to increasing the power coefficient. Topics for future study are suggested in the conclusion section of the paper.


Author(s):  
Sukanta Roy ◽  
Ujjwal K. Saha

With the rapid growth of renewable energy sector, vertical axis wind turbines are finding their applications in the small-scale distributed wind energy system, particularly in rural areas. These turbines are simple in construction and easy to install with comparatively lower cost. However, the efficiency of these turbines is not competitive to that of horizontal axis wind turbines. In this paper, an attempt has been made to improve the efficiency of a Savonius-style vertical axis wind turbine under concentrated and oriented jets through installation of deflectors at different positions ahead of the turbine. The aim is to make the major portion of the flow to be incident on the concave part of the blades. Experiments are conducted in a low speed wind tunnel with an open test section facility. For all the experiments, the wind speed in the tunnel is kept constant at 6.2 m/s. The mechanical loads are varied to analyze the performance of the turbine at various tip speed ratios. In each case, both power and torque coefficients are calculated in order to estimate the performance indices of the turbine. Moreover, a suitable operating range of this turbine is specified. The present investigation demonstrates that with the installation of deflectors, the performance of the Savonius-style wind turbines can be sufficiently improved under concentrated and oriented jets. The peak power coefficient of 0.32 is achieved with an optimized position of the deflectors in front of both the advancing and returning blades.


2012 ◽  
Vol 189 ◽  
pp. 448-452
Author(s):  
Yan Jun Chen ◽  
Guo Qing Wu ◽  
Yang Cao ◽  
Dian Gui Huang ◽  
Qin Wang ◽  
...  

Numerical studies are conducted to research the performance of a kind of lift-drag type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) affected by solidity with the CFD method. Moving mesh technique is used to construct the model. The Spalart-Allmaras one equation turbulent model and the implicit coupled algorithm based on pressure are selected to solve the transient equations. In this research, how the tip speed ratio and the solidity of blade affect the power coefficient (Cp) of the small H-VAWT is analyzed. The results indicate that Cp curves exhibit approximate parabolic form with its maximum in the middle range of tip speed ratio. The two-blade wind turbine has the lowest Cp while the three-blade one is more powerful and the four-blade one brings the highest power. With the certain number of blades, there is a best chord length, and too long or too short chord length may reduce the Cp.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0309524X2110618
Author(s):  
Syed Abdur Rahman Tahir ◽  
Muhammad Shakeel Virk

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) can be a promising solution for electricity production in remote ice prone territories of high north, where good wind resources are available, but icing is a challenge that can affect its optimum operation. A lot of research has been made to study the icing effects on the conventional horizontal axis wind turbines, but the literature about vertical axis wind turbines operating in icing conditions is still scarce, despite the importance of this topic. This paper presents a review study about existing knowledge of VAWT operation in icing condition. Focus has been made in better understanding of ice accretion physics along VAWT blades and methods to detect and mitigate icing effects.


2012 ◽  
Vol 215-216 ◽  
pp. 1323-1326
Author(s):  
Ming Wei Xu ◽  
Jian Jun Qu ◽  
Han Zhang

A small vertical axis wind turbine with wind speed self-adapting was designed. The diameter and height of the turbine were both 0.7m. It featured that the blades were composed of movable and fixed blades, and the opening and closing of the movable blades realized the wind speed self-adapting. Aerodynamic performance of this new kind turbine was tested in a simple wind tunnel. Then the self-starting and power coefficient of the turbine were studied. The turbine with load could reliably self-start and operate stably even when the wind velocity was only 3.6 m/s. When the wind velocity was 8 m/s and the load torque was 0.1Nm, the movable blades no longer opened and the wind turbine realized the conversion from drag mode to lift mode. With the increase of wind speed, the maximum power coefficient of the turbine also improves gradually. Under 8 m/s wind speed, the maximum power coefficient of the turbine reaches to 12.26%. The experimental results showed that the new turbine not only improved the self-starting ability of the lift-style turbine, but also had a higher power coefficient in low tip speed ratio.


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.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Antar ◽  
Amne El Cheikh ◽  
Michel Elkhoury

This work presents an optimized design of a dynamic rotor vertical-axis wind turbine (DR VAWT) which maximizes the operational tip-speed ratio (TSR) range and the average power coefficient (Cp) value while maintaining a low cut-in wind velocity. The DR VAWT is capable of mimicking a Savonius rotor during the start-up phase and transitioning into a Darrieus one with increasing rotor radius at higher TSRs. The design exploits the fact that with increasing rotor radius, the TSR value increases, where the peak power coefficient is attained. A 2.5D improved delayed detached eddy simulation (IDDES) approach was adopted in order to optimize the dynamic rotor design, where results showed that the generated blades’ trajectories can be readily replicated by simple mechanisms in reality. A thorough sensitivity analysis was conducted on the generated optimized blades’ trajectories, where results showed that they were insensitive to values of the Reynolds number. The performance of the DR VAWT turbine with its blades following different trajectories was contrasted with the optimized turbine, where the influence of the blade pitch angle was highlighted. Moreover, a cross comparison between the performance of the proposed design and that of the hybrid Savonius–Darrieus one found in the literature was carefully made. Finally, the effect of airfoil thickness on the performance of the optimized DR VAWT was thoroughly analyzed.


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):  
Omar Sherif Mohamed ◽  
Ahmed Ibrahim ◽  
Ahmed M. R. El Baz

Abstract The last few years have witnessed researches concerned by vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) performance considering its advantages compared to the horizontal axis wind turbines, as it can be operated in urban areas without producing noise, ease of maintenance and simple construction, in addition to its low cost. More interest is growing in developing efficient clusters of VAWT in order to increase power generation at specific sites by using multiple turbines. In the present work, the performance of various configurations of Darrieus type VAWT clusters is examined using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The objective of this work is to increase the overall power coefficient of the turbines cluster compared to single rotor performance. This objective shall be achieved by examining mutual interactions between rotors arranged in close proximity and examining the effect of oblique angle between rotors on overall performance of the cluster of rotors. The performance is assessed by observing the overall power coefficient of the cluster. Also, the velocity wake of the simulated three rotors turbine cases was analyzed and compared to the that of the single rotor.


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