Design and Analysis of Modified Savonius Wind Turbine (PowerLeaf)

Abstract

The need to extract power from wind source has drastically increased over the years. Vertical Axis wind Turbine (VAWT) is better used in areas with low and unpredictable wind velocities. The smaller size of turbines allows it to be used in compact and crowded urban spaces. Savonius wind turbines are drag based where power generation is dependent on the individual blade interaction with air. This work aims to analyze two modified Savonius turbines that take the resemblance of a leaf termed as PowerLeaf. The turbines investigated here are two bladed with one of the designs consisting overlap ratio of 0.18. The work discussed in following sections, investigates various parameters such as tip speed ratio, power coefficient, torque and power and efficacy on the better performing model. For design and computational methodology, commercially available CATIA V5 and ANSYS Fluent software are used respectively. The simulation techniques were focused on a set of wind velocities and the resulting pressure, torque and rpm at these data points. The result focuses on step by step analysis of data comparison that is crucial design parameters to determine the two geometries aerodynamic performance. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis was done to determine the resultant torque along the turbine and in the process, power output was also investigated. The analysis shows that the turbine designed without overlap performs relatively better than the turbine design consisting of it.