CFD analysis of the effects of multiple semicircular blades on Savonius wind turbine performance

Mohamed MEZIANE, Mustapha FAQIR, Elhachmi ESSADIQI, Mohammed Fathi Ghanameh

Abstract


The goal of this work is to simulate and improve the efficiency of an innovative multiple semicircular-bladed Savonius wind turbine, which is identified as belonging to the vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) category. It is characterized as a low speed turbine that is simpler and cheaper to build than traditional turbines. This makes it appropriate for generating mechanical energy in lower wind speed regions, and it can be coupled with solar panels in urban agglomerations. The objective of this paper is to compare the aerodynamic characteristics and power efficiency of four different geometries of the Savonius wind turbine (two-conventional and two-modified rotors) in order to estimate the most efficient design. The proposed Savonius design comprises multiple semicircular blades added to conventional two- and three-bladed Savonius rotor configurations. The comparison of the efficiency in terms of the torque coefficient (CT) and power coefficient (CP) of the new system configurations with the conventional ones finds that the multiple semicircular two-bladed Savonius rotor is more efficient than others.

The numerical simulation of the conventional Savonius rotor is developed and validated against experimental and numerical data derived from a literature review. The choice of turbulence model and local or global mesh refinement play essential roles in the accuracy of the numerical simulation results. In this work, we adopted a Shear Stress Transport (SST) model for modelling turbulence, which incorporates the near wall fluctuation capturing capability of the k-w model, and the robust k-emodel for modelling the whole numerical domain. An average improvement in the power coefficient of 8.43% for different tip speed ratios (TSRs) is observed for the new configuration compared with the others.


Keywords


Savonius rotor; wind energy; VAWT; Multiple-semicircular Savonius rotor; power coefficient; CFD

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References


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DOI (PDF): https://doi.org/10.20508/ijrer.v10i3.11278.g8007

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