Adaptation of a container tank to a savonius vertical axis turbine analyzed by reverse engineering

Due to the alarming climatic situation experienced by all nations, we are in the need to urgently develop and improve sustainable technologies for power generation in order to supply the growing demand for power generation in power systems worldwide. This project aims to design and build a prototype vertical axis wind turbine Savonius analyzed by reverse engineering process by adapting the structure of a tank and taking advantage of its shape and dimensions, with the intention of building a wind turbine with the lowest possible budget, In addition, data from the psychrometric chart of the state of Puebla (winter-spring) will be used so that by means of numerical simulations of fluid flow using CFD software we can obtain the parameters of linear velocity, angular velocity, drag coefficient and projected power that the wind rotor will be able to develop.

Numerical simulation of foil with leading-edge tubercle for vertical-axis tidal-current turbine

The main disadvantage of the vertical-axis turbine is its low coefficient of performance. The purpose of this work was to propose a method to improve this performance by investigating the hydrodynamic forces and the flow-field of a foil that was modified with a sinusoidal leading-edge tubercle. NACA 63(4)021 was chosen as the original foil since it has a symmetrical profile that is suitable for use on a vertical-axis tidal-current turbine. The study was conducted using a numerical simulation method with ANSYS-CFX Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code to solve the incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. Firstly, the simulation results of the original foil were validated with available experimental data. Secondly, the modified foils, with three configurations of tubercles, were modelled. From the simulation results, the tubercle foils, when compared with the original foil, had similar lift performances at low Angles of Attack (0-8 degrees of AoA), lower lift performances at medium AoA (8-19 degrees) and higher lift performances at high AoA (19-32 degrees). A tubercle foil with Height/Chord (H/C) of 0.05 can maintain the static stall condition until 32 degrees. Therefore, a vertical-axis turbine with tubercle-blades provides an opportunity to increase its performance by extending the operational range for extracting energy in the dynamic stall condition.