Dimple Shape Effect on the Aerodynamic Performance of H-Rotor Darrieus Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays, the vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have gained significant attention among the small wind turbine (WT) due to their omnidirectional ability, low costs, low noise, and robustness, mainly for urban and off-shore applications. The H-rotor Darrieus is one of the class of VAWT that is mostly suitable for low-speed wind and low tip speed ratio (TSR) conditions. These VAWTs have relatively lesser performance than horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs). Therefore, to improve the performance of the H-rotor Darrieus VAWT, a dimple/cavity of different shapes is created into the surface of the blade airfoil as a power augmentation technique. The current study presents several two-dimensional numerical simulations on the H-rotor Darrieus VAWT in the turbulent flow. The performance of the VAWT has been examined through ANSYS Fluent solver with different turbulence models, and it is found that the Shear stress transport (SST) k–ω turbulence model shows better results. The study primarily focuses on the effect of the dimple location, diameter and shape to enhance the aerodynamic performance of the H-rotor Darrieus VAWT. It is found that the rotor performance is increased by about 13% with a quadral/rectangular dimple in comparison to without dimple. Further, with the inclusion of a dimple on the rotor blade airfoil, its performance is not only enhanced but also able to maintain it for a broad range of TSR. Thus, the present study suggests the implication of a dimple/cavity to be very promising in improving H-rotor Darrieus VAWT.