Experimental and Numerical Investigation on the Performance of Straight-Bladed Vertical Axis Wind Turbine by Adding Cavities to it Structure

Abstract

As the prices of the fuel and power had fluctuated many times in the last decade and new policies appeared and signed by most of the world countries to eliminate global warming and environmental impact on the earth surface and humanity exciting, an urgent need appeared to develop the renewable energy harnessing technologies on the short-term and long-term and one of these promising technologies are the vertical axis wind turbines, and mostly the combined types. The purpose of the present work is to combine a cavity type Savonius with straight bladed Darrieus to eliminate the poor self-starting ability for Darrieus type and low performance for Savonius type and for this purpose, a three-bladed Darrieus type with symmetrical S1046 airfoil was tested experimentally and numerically at different wind speeds (4.5 m/s, 8 m/s and 10 m/s) and it showed a poor self-starting ability at low wind speed although its higher performance at high wind speed. However when adding the cavities in two setup configuration and testing it at the same conditions, it was found that when adding the cavities as reversed cups in the core of the turbine, the performance increased and the power coefficient reached a maximum value at 10 m/s wind speed and it was observed to be 0.0914 , but when the solidity increased by adding three cavities, the performance was higher at low wind speed (4.5 m/s) but it tragically decreased at higher wind speed which indicates that the performance depends on the solidity and the turbine configuration. On the other hand, the numerical simulation showed a good match with the experimental results although it under-predicted the performance.