Effect of guide vane on the performance of a sail wing turbine for wave energy conversion

Abstract

Abstract In an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) based wave energy plant, the sea wave motion is used to drive an air column in an air chamber and that results in a bi-directional airflow. An air turbine for bi-directional airflow is used to convert the pneumatic energy into mechanical energy. The sail wing turbine can be used as an air turbine for wave energy conversion because it has a special structure in which the shape of the sail changes in reciprocating airflow and always can rotate in the same direction. In addition, the sail wing turbine does not experience the stalling effect and can acquire energy at a wide range of rotational speed and flow rate. In our previous studies, the performance of the sail wing turbine for bi-directional airflow has been investigated by using a wind tunnel test. In the present study, in order to further improve the performance of the sail wing turbine, guide vanes were installed, and the effect of the guide vane on the performance was investigated by a wind tunnel test and a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis under a steady flow condition.