Numerical Investigations on the Performance Degradation of a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Operating in Dusty Environment

Rapid increase in global energy requirements has resulted in considerable attention towards energy generation from the renewable energy sources. In order to meet renewable energy targets, harnessing energy from all available resources including those from urban environment is required. Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) are seen as a potential way of utilising distributed wind energy sources. Most of the research on the wind turbines constitutes performance analysis and optimisation of VAWTs, in a clean environment, using steady state approximations where the transient effects are not considered. Operations in dusty environments (such as in desserts) may change the nature of the flow field around the VAWT which could decrease its life cycle. This study is an attempt to use Computational Fluid Dynamic’s based techniques to study and analyse the performance of a wind turbine under dusty environment. For this purpose, a novel modelling technique, known as Discrete Phase Modelling (DPM), has been used in the present study to introduce dust particles in the vicinity of a VAWT. The predicted results show that the instantaneous torque output of the VAWT decreases significantly in dusty environment. This abrupt change in the instantaneous torque output of the turbine may give rise to highly transient loads on the turbine’s structure which may induce heavy stresses on the turbine, leading to structural failure.