Numerical Study of the Effect of Depth Immersion and Rotation Direction on the Performance Cross-Flow Savonius Turbine

Energy supply is a critical variable affecting modern life. Indonesia has many renewable energies sources and one of them is ocean current. Savonius turbines, which are effective in low-speed currents, have been widely studied in their vertical form, but there has been little progress on cross-flow Savonius turbines. The turbine performance is investigated in this study by observing the behaviour caused by the influence of depth immersion, given that the surface of the submersible medium and the surface based can influence the turbulence caused. Therefore, the cross-flow Savonius turbine will be placed in three different depth conditions: 0.33H; 0.5H and 0.66H. Analysis is done with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. The turbine's rotation direction is also set in two conditions (clockwise and counterclockwise). All these scenarios result that turbine with 0.66H and clockwise condition gives the highest results with Cp value at 0.249. The vortices flow pattern created by the clockwise configuration tends downward, in contrast to the counterclockwise which points upward. The cross-flow Savonius turbine works optimally in low TSR where its performance is greatly affected by torque.