EFFECT OF THE SKEW ON THE HORIZONTAL AXIS WIND TURBINE PERFORMANCES

Abstract

This article concerns the effect of the skew on the performances of horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT). The study, which is purely numerical, involves several configurations of wind turbine, all derived from a basic wind turbine but with different laws of skew. The power developed by the basic wind turbine is known and the numerical simulation resides in comparing its power with those produced by the designed configurations. Moving reference frames k-ε and turbulence models were selected for the present calculations by using Ansys Fluent based on the Reynolds Average Navier Stokes Equations (RANS). The obtained results show that the skew distribution has an effect on the wind turbine performances. Particularly, the configuration corresponding to 20% of skew exhibits a higher power than the basic one and the gain achieves 6%. However, this investigation reveals also that configuration with 25% and 30% shows a drop of performances.