Effect of Blade Leading and Trailing Edge Configurations on the Performance of a Micro Tubular Propeller Turbine Using Response Surface Methodology

Abstract

With the recent rise in importance of environmental issues, research on micro hydropower, a kind of renewable energy source, is being actively conducted. In this study, a micro tubular propeller turbine was selected for study of micro hydropower in pipes. Numerical analysis was conducted to evaluate the performance. Response surface methodology using design of experiments was performed to efficiently investigate the effect of the blade leading and trailing edge elliptic aspect ratios on the performance. The trailing edge configuration was found to be more related to the performance, because of the drastic pressure variation due to the stagnation point formed, regardless of the leading edge configuration. To improve the performance, a NACA airfoil was introduced. The results show that the flow became more stable than the reference model, and the efficiency was increased by 2.44%.