Optimization of the Energy Capture Performance of the Lift-Drag Hybrid Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine Based on the Taguchi Experimental Method and CFD Simulation

Abstract

In order to improve the energy capture performance of vertical axis lift wind turbines in a low wind speed environment, the drag wind turbine is employed to couple with the design of existing vertical axis lift wind turbines. In contrast to the existing literature, in this work, a computational model is proposed that can simulate the interaction between the turbine and the fluid. The effects of pitch angle (β), installation angle (θ), overlap ratio (ε) and diameter ratio (DL) on the energy capture performance of hybrid vertical axis wind turbines are systematically analyzed based on Taguchi and CFD methods. The results show that under the optimized parameter combination, the peak energy capture coefficient of the lift-drag hybrid wind turbine can be increased to 0.2328, compared with 0.0309 and 0.0287 of the pure lift and drag turbine, respectively. In addition, the result of the prototype test show that the optimized hybrid wind turbine not only has a better-starting performance but also has 2.0 times the output power of that of the lift wind turbine.