Preliminary design and testing of VAWT blade for low wind speed using CFD

Abstract

This research aims to study and design vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) for low wind speed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program called ANSYS® Academic Student Release 19.2. The wind turbine type used is of Savonius type with some parts being modified in order to optimize its rotation in the simulation. The simulation setup is to place the turbine in the middle of the wind tunnel, using initial wind speed of 5 m/s. The turbine itself has dimension of 20 cm of height, 10 cm of radius and 0.15 cm of thickness. These simulation data are used to analyses wind flow dynamics, rotational speed of the turbine, tip speed ratio and Reynolds number of this design. It found that the angular velocity is 200 rpm or 20.94 rad/s, tip speed ratio is 0.41 while Reynolds number is in turbulent flow of 6, 798, 002.