Performance characteristics of a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) under transient conditions

The present work investigates the performance characteristics of a novel Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) for use in the urban environment. Here the performance of the wind turbine has been analyzed experimentally using a full scale prototype measuring 2.0m diameter and 1.0m in height. The turbine was located at the exit of a 0.6m x 0.6m wind tunnel section and was subjected to a jet flow. The performance output from the turbine has been obtained using a torque transducer unit which provides instantaneous torque and speed data. This data has been used to validate a computational model generated from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software code Fluent where a Multi Reference Frame (MRF) approach has been used. It is shown that the MRF solving technique under predicts rotor torque at high rotor speed and does not predict rotor suction effects on an upstream stream wise velocity profile. It is concluded that such variations between experimental and computational velocity fields is the primary factor that effects rotor torque output.
Keywords : Vertical axis, Turbine, Performance, Torque, CFD, MRF