Numerical and experimental investigation of H-darrieus vertical axis wind turbine

The present work focuses on a numerical and experimental study of the aerodynamic performance of the straight-bladed Darrieus type turbine, one of the most common vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). The aim of the research is to evaluate the characteristic parameters for practically applicable turbine designs using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools. Several constructions of wind turbine rotors assembled from threeor six-blade symmetric NACA0015 airfoils were investigated numerically. The two- and three-dimensional turbulent flow computations around the VAWT were performed using the Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes approach. Finite Volume approximation of PDE's and solution were performed with the extended version of the open sourced CFD toolkit OpenFOAM. Rotation of the wind turbine rotor has been realized by Generalized Grid Interface (GGI) which uses weighted interpolation to evaluate and transmit the flow values across a pair of conformal or non-conformal coupled boundaries between the stationary and rotating domains. Flow was modelled as incompressible. Comparison of the overall turbine performance parameters has been studied through experimental measurements and numerical simulations. The characteristic torque trends as functions of wind free-stream velocity and the rotor rotational frequency have been obtained.