Aerodynamic noise prediction and reduction of H-Darrieus vertical axis wind turbine

Abstract

ABSTRACT small scale VAWTs are erected in built up areas while in these locations they will be inherently close to people. Therefore, the noise radiated from a VAWT is very significant to make an investigation. In this work we carried out numerical prediction for aerodynamic acoustics of a H-Darrieus VAWT. The URANS equations is conducted to achieve the time-accurate results. The aero-acoustics noise prediction is simulated by using FW-H equation with low-Mach number assumptions. Simulations are performed under different tip speed ratios. In order to verify the accuracy of the numerical results, mean torque coefficient is compared with the experimental data. The tip-speed ratio, wind speed, receiver distance on the OASPL, distance between the source and receivers and blades number effects are investigated in this work. In addition, this work introduced a method of adding V and S tip vanes on the blade tip to reduce the aerodynamic noise of a H-VAWT. The result showed that two types of tip vanes can weaken the tip vortex and reduce the sound pressure level (SPL) of a H-VAWT.