Experimental Study of Gurney Flap on Darrieus Wind Turbine Performance

Abstract

Wind energy is a renewable energy that is easily obtained and friendly to the environment. The Darrieus wind turbine is a turbine model that is suitable for use in areas with low wind speeds. A Gurney Flap can be added to an aerodynamic device, such as a car spoiler, to improve the spoilers performance. In this study, Gurney Flaps were added to the Darrieus wind turbine to increase the turbines performance. The research objective was to study the effect of the Gurney Flap addition on the Darrieus wind turbine characteristics and the optimum geometry of the Gurney Flap. An experimental study was conducted on conventional Darrieus wind turbines and modified Darrieus wind turbines with the addition of Gurney Flaps, with angle variations of 90°, 120°, and 150° at the height of the Gurney Flap at 2% of the chord length. Each variation was tested at wind speeds of 7 m/s, 8 m/s, and 9 m/s. The experiment result angle variation of 120⁰ obtained the best (Cp) power coefficient of 0.228 at a TSR of 1.166.