Yaw Behavior of Horizontal-Axis Small Wind Turbines in an Urban Area

Abstract

This paper reports the experimental study on passive yaw behavior of a horizontal axis small wind turbines. The yaw angle velocity in a small wind turbine is one of the significant design values and IEC61400-2 Ed.2 prescribes its maximum value should be less than 3 rad/s. However, in practice, in the case of small wind turbines with diameters under 2 m, the yaw angular velocity may exceed the limit of 3 rad/s. The authors conducted a theoretical evaluation as well as a wind tunnel test to examine the possible maximum yaw velocity. The model wind turbine has a diameter of 1 m, blade number of 5, solidity of 0.26 and 2 types of tail fins (large and small). For each tail fin size, the yaw behavior was studied for a range of rotational speeds and wind speeds. The results show that the yaw angular velocity becomes larger with increasing wind velocity and tail fin area. The larger the rotor rotational speed, the smaller the yaw angular velocity. Furthermore, a maximum yaw angular velocity of 3.84 rad/s was observed at a wind speed of 10 m/s, which exceeds the conventional design value of 3 rad/s.