Flow Physics Analysis on the Effect of Cambered Airfoil Blades on Vertical Axis Wind Turbines Using CFD

Abstract

One of the promising kinds of renewable energy is wind energy, but not fully exploited till now because of low efficiency of rotors and no power production at slow wind speeds. A vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) known as H-Darrieus turbine is capable of working efficiently at low speeds and is capable of solving this issue. The design of turbine blade plays an important role in determining the power produced. Multiple experiments involving NACA series of symmetrical airfoils have been conducted to study the performance, but very few studies are available showing the outcome of using the unsymmetrical blade on an H-Darrieus wind turbine. In this paper, the computational study performed on unsymmetrical NACA airfoil blades of varying camber display improved performance. With the increase in camber, the CL value increases up to certain extent, but too much camber can result in decrease in performance.