The influence of the number of rotor blades on the performance of orthopter wind turbine

Abstract

This paper describes the influence of the number of rotor blades the performance of the orthopter wind turbine. The orthopter wind turbine is combination between a drag-type and a lift-type vertical axis wind turbine which each blade combines a rotating movement around its own axis and a rotating movement around turbine's axis. In this case, the pitch of the blades was controlled by using a chain and sprockets arrangement to ensure that the blades rotated around their own axis by 360 degrees during the each two full revolution of the main rotor. To improve the performance of this wind turbine, the number of blades, was investigated by wind tunnel. By conducting two-dimensional unsteady CFD simulations, the power and torque of the vertical axis wind turbine and the flow around blades were also analyzed. The numerical simulation by using turbulence model predicted good agreement of the performance with experiment qualitatively.