Effect of Airfoil Shape on the Aerodynamic performance of a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs), which are one of the most promising wind energy harvesters have started recently to attract more and more attention due to their several advantages, especially in the small-scale wind turbines market. This study employed ANSYS Fluent software to numerically investigate the impact of airfoil profile on the aerodynamic forces generated on the blades of a VAWT. This research employed the NACA four-digit series in order to examine the influence of blade thickness and blade camber. 2D CFD model is employed for this study, the results showed that increasing blade thickness is decreasing the torque and power coefficients. On the other hand, there was an improvement in terms of torque and power coefficients when symmetric airfoil used compared to non-symmetric airfoil.