Lift and Drag Forces With Respect to Azimuth Position of a Darrieus Wind Turbine

Abstract

Tangential force is the most important parameter for driving the blade of a straight bladed H-Darrieus wind turbine forward. The direction of this force is very critical as it may move the blade forward (positive force) or it can also oppose the rotation (negative force). The direction of tangential force depends upon the distribution of two fundamental aerodynamic forces around the wind turbine blade i.e. Lift and drag. Current study aims to understand the impact of lift and drag forces on the tangential force variation with respect to (w.r.t) azimuth position. Commercial CFD software SC/tetra was employed in order to solve the unsteady Reynold-averaged Navier stokes (URANS) equations around the blades. Results show that very small portion (maximum 20% during rotation) of the drag force is actually converted into useful tangential force whereas rest of the drag force is converted into either normal force or negative tangential force (waste of energy). On the other hand, out of all the generated lift force, 70–90 percent is seemed to be beneficial for moving the blade forward and rest of the lift force also tries to oppose the motion (almost 15%). Overall, it was found that only 50–60 percent of the resultant force (lift + drag) acting on the blade, is actually useful to move the blade forward. The study was conducted at seven different tip speed ratios (TSRs) i.e. 1, 2, 2.28, 3, 3.5, 4 and 5 with NACA 0015 airfoil. Relatively higher fluctuations were observed in the distribution of forces at low values of TSRs (1 and 2) as compared to high values of TSRs (4 and 5). The results presented here are only limited to NACA 0015 whereas same methodology can be adopted for other blade profiles in future as well.