Geometry optimization of small helicoid VAWT rotor

Abstract

The exploration of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency are becoming crucial for putting climate change under control. Thanks to large investments in development of technology for transformation of wind energy to useful form of energy, wind energy became one of the most sustainable energy source. According to the fact that horizontal wind turbines (HAWT) are more common, vertical wind turbines (VAWT) are gradually becoming more interesting because of less direction of wind sensitivity that those turbines have. Geometric parameters of rotor, such as aero foil shape, pitch angle, chord length, rotor radius, blades length, number of blades, significantly influence to the helical VAWT rotor performances. In order to be able to do influence analysis of those parameters to the helical VAWT performances, it is necessary to perform huge number of expensive experimental testing. In order to determine optimal number of needed experiments, special attention has to be put on experimental research designing. With correct design of experiment, expenses of helical VAWT rotor development are significantly increased, by using computer simulations tools that are very reliable in those experiment designs and computer simulations can replace preliminary experiment researches. In this paper, by using SolidWorks Flow Simulation tool, the research of influence of pitch angle, chord length, rotor radius and rotor height on the rotor torque, was performed. Design of Experiments and Optimization option, enables defining and performing huge number of computer simulated experiments, where chosen variables are changing their values in the plan range, defined with minimum and maximum, and all according to perform optimal study for more than one variable. Testing on rotor with three blades of NACA 0018 aero profile, with 5 m/s wind velocity, was simulated and presented in this paper.