Computational Analysis of Symmetric and Cambered Blade Darrieus Vertical Axis Wind Turbine With Bio-Mimicked Blade Design

Abstract

Vertical axis wind turbine suffers from low performance, and the need for improvement is a challenge. This work addresses this problem by using computational fluid dynamics. This chapter aims to analyze and compare symmetric and cambered Darrieus turbine. These analyses are usually carried for straight leading-edge blades, and cambered resembles more the natural shape of the wing of birds and other aquatic mammals, which helps them generate extra lift during movement. Moreover, recent studies suggest better performance was observed for NACA0018 symmetric aerofoil blades, and a similar trend has been observed for NACA2412 cambered aerofoil profiles. Turbine models having symmetric NACA0018 and cambered NACA2412 profiles have been studied. By comparing the symmetric model with cambered blade models, differences in coefficient of torque have been presented. OpenFOAM is used for performing the 2D simulation with dynamicOverset-FvMesh for motion solver with overset mesh method. Meshed geometry was constructed with GMSH codes and the simulation uses overPimpleDyMFoam algorithm as a solver.