EnginSoft - CAE Conference Abstracts

EnginSoft International Conference 2011
CAE Technologies for Industry

Effect of Airfoil Geometry on Darrieus Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine Performance

Castelli Marco Raciti - Università di Padova (Italy)
Benini Ernesto - Università di Padova (Italy)

Abstract

This paper presents a two-dimensional CFD comparison of the influence of blade geometry on the operation of a straight-bladed Darrieus-type vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT). After describing the computational model and the relative validation procedure, a complete campaign of simulations based on full RANS unsteady calculations is proposed for a three-bladed rotor architecture. Two symmetrical blade profiles of NACA series are analyzed: a NACA 0012 and a NACA 0015 airfoil. For each proposed blade configuration, flow field characteristics in the neighborhood of the rotor are investigated at several values of tip speed ratio, allowing a quantification of the influence of blade thickness on flow geometric features.
Finally, the rotor torque and power curves are compared for the two analyzed architectures, achieving a quantification of the effect of airfoil geometry on overall rotor performance.