Numerical Investigations of the Effects of the Rotating Shaft and Optimization of Urban Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

Abstract

The central shaft is an important and indispensable part of a small scale urban vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). Normally, it is often operated at the same angular velocity as the wind turbine. The shedding vortices released by the rotating shaft have a negative effect on the blades passing the wake of the wind shaft. The objective of this study is to explore the influence of the wake of rotating shaft on the performance of the VAWT under different operational and physical parameters. The results show that when the ratio of the shaft diameter to the wind turbine diameter (α) is 9%, the power loss of the wind turbine in one revolution increases from 0% to 25% relative to that of no-shaft wind turbine (this is a numerical experiment for which the shaft of the VAWT is removed in order to study the interactions between the shaft and blade). When the downstream blades pass through the wake of the shaft, the pressure gradient of the suction side and pressure side is changed, and an adverse effect is also exerted on the lift generation in the blades. In addition, α = 5% is a critical value for the rotating shaft wind turbine (the lift-drag ratio trend of the shaft changes differently). In order to figure out the impacts of four factors; namely, tip speed ratios (TSRs), α, turbulence intensity (TI), and the relative surface roughness value (k s /d s ) on the performance of a VAWT system, the Taguchi method is employed in this study. The influence strength order of these factors is featured by TSRs > k s /d s > α > TI. Furthermore, within the range we have analyzed in this study, the optimal power coefficient (C p ) occurred under the condition of TSR = 4, α = 5%, k s /d s = 1 × 10 −2 , and TI = 8%.

CFD Computation of the H-Darrieus Wind Turbine—The Impact of the Rotating Shaft on the Rotor Performance

“…It has been proven that the power losses increase asymptotically as the shaft-to-turbine diameter increases up to 5.5% for δ = 16% compared to a rotor without a shaft. The numerical results of Zhang et al [25] shows that for δ of 9% the power loss of the rotor increases even up to 25% relative to the no-shaft rotor.…”

Performance Analysis of a H-Darrieus Wind Turbine for a Series of 4-Digit NACA Airfoils

“…However, as the market demand shows, there is a great demand for this type of The reason mentioned in the paragraph above is not the only reason for this topic. In recent years, many experimental and numerical studies of micro scale vertical-axis wind turbines have been carried out [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. A lot of research is also underway in the field of multi-megawatt offshore Darrieus-type wind turbines [20][21][22].…”

Experimental Vibration Analysis of a Small Scale Vertical Wind Energy System for Residential Use

“…Wind turbines can be divided in two main categories according to the rotational axis disposition: horizontal or vertical [8]. Although in large wind farms horizontal axis models are the most used because of higher efficiency [4] and consequently a better return on investment [4], for OSG purposes vertical axis small wind turbines (VASWT) can be preferred with respect to horizontal axis small wind turbines (HASWT) for the following main reasons [9]:…”