Aerodynamics of the Darrieus wind turbine is an extremely complex issue requiring the use of very advanced numerical methods. Additional structural components of this device, such as, for example, a rotating shaft disturb the flow through the rotor significantly impairing its aerodynamic characteristics. The main purpose of the presented research is to validate the commonly-used unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) approach with the shear stress transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model based on the particle image velocimetry (PIV) studies of a two-bladed rotor operating at the moderate tip speed ratio of 4.5. In the present numerical studies, a two-dimensional turbine rotor with a diameter of 1 meter was considered. The following parameters were evaluated: instantaneous velocity fields; velocity profiles in the rotor shadow and aerodynamic blade loads. The obtained numerical results are comparable with the reference experimental results taken from the literature. The second purpose of this work was to examine the influence of the rotating rotor shaft/tower on the wind turbine performance. It has been proven that the cylindrical shaft reduces the power of the device by 2.5% in comparison with the non-shaft configuration.

In this paper, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of a two-dimensional two-bucket Savonius rotor, using ANSYS Fluent solver, is presented. Computational methods of fluid dynamics are used to estimate the aerodynamic forces acting on the rotor, the torque and the power extracted by the Savonius rotor. In addition, an analysis of the results for different turbulence models is performed. Numerical investigations are compared with the experiment of the Sandia National Laboratories.

In spite of the attractiveness of CFD methods and advanced measurement methods, there is still no full analysis of aerodynamic blade loads for vertical axis Darrieus-type wind turbines. Due to an inherently unsteady flow around the rotor blades, blade-wake-blade interaction and the occurrence of dynamic stall, the aerodynamics of this type of wind turbine is very complex. A two-bladed rotor have been investigated numerically for the tip speed ratio of 5.0. This paper compares results for aerodynamic blade loads obtained applying such turbulence models as: the standard k-ε; the RNG k-ε; the Realizable k-ε and the SST k-ω. As a result, quantitative instantaneous blade forces as well as instantaneous wake profiles behind the rotor have been obtained. Aerodynamic wake behind the rotor is also visualized by using streak lines. All CFD results are compared with experimental data taken from literature. Good agreement between the numerical results and the experiment is shown for the aerodynamic blade loads as well as for aerodynamic wake behind the rotor.

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