Determining Optimum Rotary Blade Design for Wind-Powered Water-Pumping Systems for Local Selected Sites

Abstract

The design of a windmill rotor is critical for harnessing wind energy. In this work, a study is conducted to optimize the design and performance of a rotor blade that is suitable for low wind conditions. The windmills’ rotor blades are aerodynamically designed based on the SG6043 airfoil and wind speed data at local selected sites. The aerodynamic profile of the rotor blade that can provide a maximum power coefficient, which is the relation between real rotor performance and the available wind energy on a given reference area, was calculated. Different parameters, such as blade shapes, chord distributions, tip speed ratio, geometries set angles, etc., were used to optimize the blade design with the objective of extracting maximum wind power for a water pumping system. Windmill rotor of 10.74 m, 7.34 m, and 6.34 m diameter with three blades were obtained for the selected sites at Abomsa, Metehara, and Ziway in south-east Ethiopia. During the rotary blades performance optimization, blade element momentum (BEM) theory and solving iteration by MATLAB® coding were used.

Optimal Rotary Wind Turbine Blade Modeling with Bond Graph Approach for Specific Local Sites

“…In this work, the dynamic behavior of an optimal rotary wind turbine blade for local selected sites (Abomsa, Metehara, and Ziway in Ethiopia) [23,24] is studied with a bond graph approach and simulated with MATLAB/Simulink. The wind turbine blade structure with three sections and the aerodynamic loads exerted on each wind turbine blade section were modeled with the bond graph method, and the overall bond graph model of the wind turbine blade was obtained by linking the bond graph models of the blade structure and aerodynamic loads.…”

“…In the proposed model, the blade is considered as a twisted Rayleigh beam which is made up of several sections of the type SG6043 airfoil [22,23], and each section is subjected to aerodynamic loads that are computed using the BEM theory. The results of the proposed models are validated using MATLAB/Simulink with real data from selected specific sites (Abomsa, Metehara, and Ziway) [24] in Ethiopia.…”

Design Optimization of Mechanical Valves in Dishwashers Based on the Minimization of Pressure Losses

“…Mixing efficiency and torque were used to find the optimal design for the different specific gravities of solid particles employed in both experiments and CFD simulations. Mohammed et al [13] have optimized the rotary blades for a wind-powered water pumping system. They investigated the blade parameters such as chord distribution length, angle of twist, tip speed ratio, power coefficient of the blade and attack angle.…”