Numerical study of improving Savonius turbine power coefficient by various blade shapes

Abstract

Many Modifications have been studied for classical Savonius wind turbines in the blade shape to improve the power efficiency. Four rotor blade modifications have been studied in the present study: classical, elliptical, using Fluent Adjoint solver and a novel blade design. Moreover, the influence of shaft, overlap ratio and blades number were conducted. Two dimensional CFD simulation is compared with the experimental data by using four turbulence models to determine the suitable models. The results of power efficiency indicate that the k-ε realizable turbulence model is more accurate when compared with the other models. The novel blade design showed better performance than other used modifications. Keywords: Vertical axis wind turbine, Savonius, CFD, Coefficient of power, Rotor blades