Free-Spinning Numerical Simulation of a Novel Vertical Axis Small Water Turbine Generator for Installation in a Water Pipeline

Abstract

The design of a novel vertical-axis small water turbine generator for installation in a pipeline is the primary purpose of this research. The water turbines have been designed as small turbines with a diameter of 48 mm, and they are installed inside a 2-inch or 50.8-mm pipe. In this work, researchers designed a 2D model of domain C and a 3D model of a small water turbine wheel, deflector, and pipeline system by using Autodesk Flow Simulation. The control volume technique was used in the numerical simulation method, and the k-epsilon turbulence model was employed to find the computational results. When the appropriate element meshing for each model section was generated for numerical simulation in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), it was found that the torque from the water turbine modelling changed based on the time domains and was connected to speed relative to the developed force. The next step is to collect the produced lift force, drag force, pressure coefficient (CP), torque, rotational speed, pressure drop, and output power for each turbine using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Results obtained from Autodesk Flow Simulation have shown that a water flow of 0.0015 m3/s and a velocity of 0.74 m/s can run on the designed vertical-axis small water turbine, delivering 6.62 W of maximum mechanical power at 423.13 RPM. The higher the wind turbine efficiency is, more energy will be developed in Thailand