Performance Evaluation of a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine using CFD and Wind Tunnel Test

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis on the performance of vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). The static torque curve of the turbine was drawn under different wind speeds and different angles by using Fluent for studying the performance of the wind turbine’s starting torque. The curve of the turbine’s power with the angular velocity at rated wind speed was also drawn by using Multiple Reference Frame method for simulation of the rotation impeller. To improve wind turbine’s aerodynamic performance, different number of deflectors and wind turbine with wind gap were studied by means of simulation. Numerical simulation should be combined with experiments to accurately evaluate the performance of a wind turbine. Wind tunnel experiments and numerical simulation results complement each other, the results obtained play an important role in guiding the design of the wind turbine structure.