A Study of Modified Vertical Axis Tidal Turbine to Improve Lift Performance

Abstract

A design of Darrieus vertical axis tidal turbine using modified airfoil was studied numerically in this work. The turbine design was evaluated in 2D CFD model using kω turbulence model, upwind interpolation scheme and simulated using OpenFOAM. The turbine had three blades which were arranged symmetrically. The blades were of NACA 0012 airfoil which had been modified in the trailing edge region to increase its lift performance. The modification was made by truncating the trailing edge at the 15% of chord length from the trailing edge. Single normal and blunt airfoil were modelled and investigated prior to the turbine design evaluation. For generating the mesh, Cstructured grid was employed to the single airfoil model and hybrid mesh to the vertical axis tidal turbine model. From the single airfoil simulations, it was found that blunt NACA0012 had 12% higher lift coefficient than normal airfoil and the pressure coefficient magnitude of blunt vertical axis tidal turbine significantly rise two times from vertical axis tidal turbine using normal NACA0012 airfoil.  Index Terms-vertical axis tidal turbine, Darrieus turbine, truncated Naca0012, blunt airfoil

Experimental Study on the Effect of Foil Guide Vane on the Performance of a Straight-Blade Vertical Axis Ocean Current Turbine

“…Many attempts have been made to improve the straight-blade vertical axis ocean current turbine performance by modifying the foil, blade, and rotor. Arini et al [12] have carried out research with modifi ed foil and showed it can increase lift performance by 12% by cutting the trailing edge of the foil. Analysis by modifying blades has been carried out for the fi rst time by Gorlov [13], and the results show that it can increase the maximum power coeffi cient up to 0.35 by changing the shape of a straight blade into a helical blade.…”

Analysis of Influence of Different Parameters on Numerical Simulation of NACA0012 Incompressible External Flow Field under High Reynolds Numbers

“…Ref. [21] adopts the two shapes to study the influence on turbine performance under the conditions of R e of 3 million and the SST k-omega turbulence model, but the influence on the simulation accuracy of NACA0012 force coefficients is not analyzed. Ref.…”