Unsteady flow simulation of a vertical axis augmented wind turbine: A two-dimensional study

Abstract

As the integration of vertical axis wind turbines in the built environment is a promising alternative to horizontal axis wind turbines, a 2D computational investigation of an augmented wind turbine is proposed and analysed. In the initial CFD analysis, three parameters are carefully investigated: mesh resolution; turbulence model; and time step size. It appears that the mesh resolution and the turbulence model affect result accuracy; while the time step size examined, for the unsteady nature of the flow, has small impact on the numerical results. In the CFD validation of the open rotor with secondary data, the numerical results are in good agreement in terms of shape. It is, however, observed a discrepancy factor of 2 between numerical and experimental data. Successively, the introduction of an omnidirectional stator around the wind turbine increases the power and torque coefficients by around 30–35% when compared to the open case; but attention needs to be given to the orientation of the stator blades for optimum performance. It is found that the power and torque coefficients of the augmented wind turbine are independent of the incident wind speed considered.