Towards smart blades for vertical axis wind turbines: different airfoil shapes and tip speed ratios

Abstract

Future wind turbines will benefit from state-of-the-art technologies that allow them to not only operate efficiently in any environmental condition but also maximise the power output and cut the cost of energy production. Smart technology, based on morphing blades, is one of the promising tools that could make this possible. The present study serves as a first step towards designing morphing blades as functions of azimuthal angle and tip speed ratio for vertical axis wind turbines. The focus of this work is on individual and combined quasi-static analysis of three airfoil shape-defining parameters, namely the maximum thickness t/c and its chordwise position xt/c as well as the leading-edge radius index I. A total of 126 airfoils are generated for a single-blade H-type Darrieus turbine with a fixed blade and spoke connection point at c/2. The analysis is based on 630 high-fidelity transient 2D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations previously validated with experiments. The results show that with increasing tip speed ratio the optimal maximum thickness decreases from 24g%c (percent of the airfoil chord length in metres) to 10g%c, its chordwise position shifts from 35g%c to 22.5g%c, while the corresponding leading-edge radius index remains at 4.5. The results show an average relative improvement of 0.46 and an average increase of nearly 0.06 in CP for all the values of tip speed ratio.