Comparison of Blade Dimension Design of a Vertical Wind Turbine Applied in Low Wind Speed

Abstract

The type of vertical turbine used for this research was a savonious where the profile of the blade was made in the form of a half-cylinder. The performance of the turbine rotation was strongly influenced by the swept area. Drag and lift force was influenced by the swept area. Both of the forces had its own advantages and disadvantages. Because of that, the dimensional engineering was implemented to obtain the optimal performance of the turbine. Experimental dimensions were tested with the variation of height size (H = 40 cm and 60 cm) and diameter size (D = 40 cm and 60 cm). The distance between the blades known as the overlap ratio was related to the dimensions. Overlap ratio has a role to the upwind and downwind wind flow because the overlap ratio changes affect the swept area. The experimental variation of the overlap ratio was at the distance of 0 cm and 10 cm. The experimental results concluded that the best turbine performance was obtained during wind turbine testing with H = 40 cm and D = 60 cm on primary overlap value minus 10 cm and secondary overlap 0 cm.