Performance enhancement of Savonius wind turbine by blade shape and twisted angle modifications

Abstract

Three-dimensional CFD simulations are carried out to study the increase of power generated from Savonius vertical axis wind turbines by modifying the blade shape and blade angel of twist. Twisting angle of the classical blade are varied and several proposed novel blade shapes are introduced to enhance the performance of the wind turbine. CFD simulations have been performed using sliding mesh technique of ANSYS software. Four turbulence models; realizable k -[Formula: see text], standard k - [Formula: see text], SST transition and SST k -[Formula: see text] are utilized in the simulations. The blade twisting angle has been modified for the proposed dimensions and wind speed. The introduced novel blade increased the power generated compared to the classical shapes. The two proposed novel blades achieved better power coefficients. One of the proposed models achieved an increase of 31% and the other one achieved 32.2% when compared to the classical rotor shape. The optimum twist angel for the two proposed models achieved 5.66% and 5.69% when compared with zero angle of twist.