The wind turbines with a flanged-diffuser shroud -so called "wind lens turbine"-are developed as one of high performance wind turbines by Ohya et al. In order to investigate the flow characteristics and flow acceleration, the paper presents the flow velocity measurements of a long-type and a compact-type wind turbines with a flanged-diffuser shroud by particle image velocimetry. In the case of the long type wind turbine, the velocity vectors of the inner flow field of the diffuser for turbine blades rotating and no blades rotating are presented at Reynolds number, 0.9×105. Furthermore the flow fields between with and without rotating are compared. Through the PIV measurement results, one can realize that the turbine blades rotating affects as suppress the disturbance and the flow separation near the inner wall of the diffuser. The time average velocity vectors are made on the average of the instantaneous velocity data. There are two large vortices in downstream region of the diffuser. One vortex behind the flange acts as suck in wind to the diffuser and raise the inlet flow velocity. Another large vortex appears in downstream. It might be act as blockage vortex of main flow. The large blockage vortex is not clear in the instantaneous velocity vectors, however it exists clearly in the time average flow field. The flow field around the wind turbine with a compact-type flanged-diffuser shroud is also investigated. The flow pattern behind the flange of the compact-type turbine is the same as the long-type one. It means that the effect of flow acceleration is caused by the unsteady vortices behind the flange. The comparison with CFD and PIV results of meridional time-average streamlines after the compact-type diffuser is also presented.

The objective of this study is to show the effect of guide vane geometry on the performance of wind turbine. In order to overcome the disadvantages of vertical axis wind turbine, a straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine (S-VAWT) with a directed guide vane row has been proposed and tested by the authors. According to previous studies, it was clarified that the performance of the turbine can be improved by means of the directed guide vane row. However, the guide vane geometry of S-VAWT has not been optimized so far. In order to clarify the effect of guide vane geometry, the effects of distance between the guide vanes and the number of guide vanes on power and torque coefficients were investigated in the experiments. The experimental study was carried out by a wind tunnel. The wind tunnel with a diameter of 1.8m is open jet type. The wind velocity is from 5 to 9 m/s in the experiments. The rotor has three straight blades with a profile of NACA4518 and a chord length of 100 mm, a diameter of 0.6 m and a blade height of 0.7 m. The guide vane row consists of some arc plates.

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The wind turbine with a flanged-diffuser shroud-so called "wind-lens turbine"-is developed as one of high performance wind turbines by Ohya et al. In this paper, the wind turbine performance is investigated for both steady and unsteady winds. The compact-type wind lens turbine shows higher efficiency than the only rotor wind turbine. Also, the flow structure around the compact-type wind turbine is made clear by CFD and PIV in steady wind. Furthermore, the performances of the only rotor and the compact-type wind-lens turbines for unsteady wind are experimentally and numerically investigated. Experimental and numerical results are presented to demonstrate the dependence of frequency of the harmonic oscillating velocity wind on power coefficient. Consequently, the compact-type wind-lens turbine show better performance than the only rotor one in sinusoidally oscillating velocity wind. Furthermore, the numerical estimation can predict the power coefficient in the oscillating flows to an accuracy of 94% to 102%. In addition, the dependence of the turbine performance on turbulent intensity and vortex scale of natural fluctuating wind is presented.