Improvement of Savonius wind turbine performance with using wind collector

Abstract

In this study, the improvement of the turbine performance of Savonius, one of the vertical axis wind turbines, was carried out numerically. The numerical approach used in the improvement studies was supported by experimental results and was confirmed. Within the scope of this improvement, a wind collector was placed in the turbine front zone to decrease the negative moment on the counter-rotating blade of the Savonius turbine. To obtain the highest turbine performance, all of the changes in the design parameters of this wind collector, such as the wind inlet width, wind outlet width, collector length, and collector height, were examined, and ideal design parameters of the collector were specified. The geometric parameters of the investigated wind collector were taken depending on the circular dimension of the Savonius turbine used. Unsteady simulations for different geometric parameters using the sliding mesh approach were performed in the CFD program. According to the numerical analysis results, the power-coefficient of the conventional turbine was increased to 0.23 levels by using the wind collector with the ideal geometric parameters. Thus, with the use of a wind collector, the power coefficient of a conventional Savonius wind turbine was improved by about 54%.