Performance analysis of the blade for the v-shaped vertical axis wind turbine

Abstract A large-scale vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) can lower the installation, operation, and maintenance cost for offshore areas as compared to the current offshore horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) designs. This is because of its simplicity of design and the location of heavy and complex mechanical parts near the water’s surface. On that account, this article studies the aerodynamic performance capacity- the ability to efficiently capture and convert wind energy into rotational mechanical energy- of different blade models for novel V-shaped VAWT It has always been a challenging task to formulate a mathematical model for the complex aerodynamic behavior of the air around the VAWT blades. Nevertheless, previous studies have shown that prediction of the performance has been done more accurately using the CFD model compared to other models. Hence, a similar approach is used for the blade models in this research. The article studies the change in aerodynamic performance of V-VAWT with the change in the shape of its blade using 3D CFD simulation. A transient RANS simulation is carried out for different models of blades. For this, a hybrid mesh model is developed and simulations are conducted in ANSYS Fluent. The mesh independence, time-step independence, and rotation independence tests are completed to reduce errors in the simulation. The coefficient of moment (Cm) developed by the blade for five different blade models is studied. The aerodynamic performance of higher solidity constant chord blades is found to be higher than lower solidity constant chord blades. Also, the performance of tapered blades is found to be better than the constant chord blade, and tapered blades are suggested for the V-VAWT turbine models.