Numerical investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics for the integrated vertical movable vanes with the airfoil straight blade vertical axis wind turbine

Abstract

With the depletion of fossil fuels and the effects of fossil fuel emissions on climate change. The demands of the renewable energy is increasing. For these reasons, many researchers they are focused on harvesting renewable energy and reducing the use of fossil fuels. The vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) is one type of the wind turbine that is widely used now a day. Low starting torque occurs when the airfoil is used in the straight blade vertical axis wind turbine as a blade. In order to increase the turbine starting torque, a flat plate vane type VAWT having movable vane is integrated with the airfoil straight blade VAWT in one rotor combination. In the present study, the numerical simulation is carried out to predict the aerodynamic characteristics of the combined three blades vertical axis wind turbine. A commercial available SolidWork2016 and computational fluid dynamic (fluent) software's with k-ω turbulence mode are used in this simulation. The predicted results from the simulation show that the turbine starting torque is increased when the vertical movable vanes are integrated with the straight blade in the vertical axis wind turbine. The flow of air passes freely through the movable vanes in case of the vanes are fully open at the negative side of the turbine, this case helps to increase turbine rotation and so, thus, the power of the turbine increases. Finally, the predicted results from the simulation give a good agreement with those results reported in the published literature for VAWT has different blade configurations.