Numerical investigation on the effects of different wind directions, solidity, airfoils, and building configurations on the aerodynamic performance of building augmented vertical axis wind turbines

Abstract

ABSTRACTFor utilizing the high-quality wind energy around the high-rise building, the aerodynamic performance of building augmented straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine (BASB-VAWT) was investigated by 2-dimensional CFD. The effects of wind direction, solidity, airfoil, and building configurations on BASB-VAWTs were studied to provide the reference of practical application. By considering the boundary layer effect of the building, the numerical results show that the aerodynamic performance of BASB-VAWTs is significantly sensitive to the wind direction. When the wind direction is North (the channel direction of BASB-VAWT is West), BASB-VAWTs barely generate power. The different airfoils, various solidity, and architectural configurations also have a great influence on the aerodynamic performance of BASB-VAWTs. With the increasing solidity, the load fluctuation can be reduced sharply and the maximum power coefficient is increased firstly and then decrease. Therefore, the optimal blade of NACA 0021 airfoil and solidity of 0.333 is promising to achieve better performance. Most of the building configurations were determined initially and thus the results in this paper merely provide a suggestion of the optimal building configuration.