CFD investigation of unsteady three-dimensional savonius hydrokinetic turbine in irrigation channel with varying positions for hydro power application

Abstract

Savonius turbines are a drag driven device, and it has high starting torque. It is a vertical axis turbine and installed in small irrigation channels to utilize the hydrokinetic energy available. Since the density of water is more and the flow of water in the channel is constrained to one direction is the advantage for a vertical axis turbine as it reduces the yaw control mechanism. In the present work, a three-dimensional conventional Savonius turbine modeled and meshed in ANSYS Fluent and unsteady transient simulations are carried out using a sliding mesh technique. The computational simulations were carried out at three different positions to analyze the effect of placing a turbine blade in the high depth of water using a conventional Savonius turbine blade with an aspect ratio of 0.7 and 0.0 overlap ratio. The turbulence model used for CFD simulation is the k-ω SST model, and the results found that the maximum coefficient of torque and coefficient of power of 0.22 and 0.17 at a tip speed ratio of 0.7 and 0.9 respectively.