Morphing a Straight-bladed Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Design: CFD-Based Analysis
T.J.M. Eijkhout (TU Delft - Mechanical Engineering)
J. Jovanova – Mentor (TU Delft - Transport Engineering and Logistics)
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Abstract
Wind turbines have proven to be an essential part for the green energy mix. However, the focus was mainly on the horizontal axis wind turbines whereas the vertical axis wind turbine did not receive that amount of attention. In this work a straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine (SB-VAWT) is explored which can temporary adjusts its rotor blades in order to increase its overall performance. Also, shape memory alloy (SMA) as an actuator is shortly investigated as a potential addition to the wind turbine. After generating and evaluating several concepts, the vertical axis wind turbine shaped in a V (V-VAWT) was still undeveloped and proves to be a potential candidate. There is a relationship between the turbine solidity and the optimal TSR which directly affects the coefficient of power. For design purposes, this is an excellent instrument to utilise. The overall performance of the V-VAWT and the SB-VAWT were compared using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software from ANSYS Fluent. The SB-VAWT and the V-VAWT have the same solidity. Both the dynamic mesh and sliding mesh methods were executed with mainly the standard k-$\epsilon$ turbulence model. The results indicated that the SB-VAWT performs better regarding the starting capabilities whereas the V-VAWT performs better at the optimal tip-speed ratio (TSR). However, the V-VAWT does not have a higher absolute power output compared to the SB-VAWT at every TSR. The SB-VAWT is overall the better candidate considering the peak efficiency, average power coefficient, absolute power output and operational range. Therefore, it is not desirable to morph the SB-VAWT into a V-VAWT.