Comparison Investigation of Airfoils Used in H-Rotor Darrieus Wind Turbine

Abstract

A Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) is considered one of the promising types of turbines. Although the full life cycle of VAWTs shows that it has advantageous on a cost basis or material basis over Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines HAWTs. VAWTs are easy to connect generator/gears, lower fatigue, and easier blade control if required and compact design. Darrieus turbine is one of the most important types of VAWTs since it reaches to an approximate level of horizontal axis wind turbines. The main disadvantages are that the Darrieus turbine are not a self-starting turbine and its performance is low comparing to the horizontal axis. In order to improve the Darrieus performance and its execution, it needs to check the efficiency of the H-rotor Darrieus turbine. In this project, ANSYS is used to compare between different types of airfoils to check which one gives a precise result. This experiment will be carried out by two-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics to the aerodynamic investigation for 15 different types of symmetric and non-symmetric airfoils. Through the test, if attack angle is increased, the Cl/Cd ratio increases as well. The Cl/Cd ratio is representing the performance factor of an accurate result and shape of airfoils. There are four family types of airfoils that give a smoother result than the rest of airfoils, and the results indicated that AH93W215 has the highest possible efficiency with the wider operating range compared with other four-airfoil sections. This study expresses the idea of using AH93W215 airfoil instead of the conventional NACA 00XX for the H-rotor Darrieus turbine since it has a better performance and precise results.