Analysis of the blade profile of the Savonius wind turbine using computational fluid dynamics

Abstract

This study characterises the performance of the Savonius type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). The performance of the Savonius type VAWT can be characterised by power and coefficient of power. The main parameter considered for analysing the Savonius-type VAWT is the tip speed ratio (TSR). The mesh independency test and time independency test are carried out, in which the medium mesh and three degree of time step for rotation are selected. The Savonius wind turbine is analysed at various TSR ranging from 0.2 to5.0, in which TSR is 4.4, the performance of the turbine is high. Considering 4.4 TSR as the optimum one, the analysis of the Savonius type VAWT is carried out under various wind speed ranging from 1 to 10 m/s. From the analysis, the validation between numerical analysis and theoretical analysis is carried out and the efficiency of the Savonius type VAWT is increased to 50%.