Performance Analysis and Design of Vertical Axis Tidal Stream Turbine

Abstract

This study numerically analyzes the unsteady flow around the Darrieus-type turbine by using FLUENT and deals with the application to the design of blades. Two kinds of blade sections were used in this study. Unsteady RANS equation and the turbulence model, either k-e or k-ω model, which are appropriate for each blade section, were employed. First for the NACA 634-021blade that the experimental data is available, the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional numerical analyses have been performed and compared with the experimental result. For the optimization of the turbine, the parametric study has been performed to check the performance in accordance with the changes in the number of blades, solidity and camber. It is demonstrated that the present approach could draw the turbine characteristics better in performance than the existing turbine. Next for the NACA 653-018 blade with the high lift-drag ratio from the purpose of developing highly-efficient turbine, this study has also tried to get the highly efficient turbine specifications by analyzing the performance while using 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional numerical analyses and the result was verified through the experiment. According to the present study, it is concluded that the 3-dimensional numerical analysis has simulated the experimental values relatively well and also, the 2-dimensional analysis can be a useful tool in the parametric study for the turbine design.