Experimental and CFD analysis of the flow in the wake of a vertical axis wind turbine

Identifier:  TDX:2608

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2608

Authors:  Sánchez Morales, Valentin

Abstract:
This thesis is divided in two blocks where the flow around a VAWT is analysed. The first block is focused on the experimental and numerical study of a VAWT with eight blades based in drag phenomenon. The experiments are carried out in two parts. In the first part, the wind velocity is set to 10 m/s to measure the power curve of the turbine and the results are compared with those of Savonius turbines in different wind tunnels. The reduction of the number of blades of the turbine has been also analysed and it has been found that the performance increases. In the second part, the wind velocity is set to 4.5 m/s to perform smoke visualization experiments. The smoke visualization technique has allowed the qualitative validation of the 2D simulations because the flow patterns visualized are similar to those numerically simulated. The numerical simulations have demonstrated that the four blades turbine generates higher torque than the turbine with eight blades. In the second block, a new model to predict the wake of VAWTs is proposed and analysed. The model is based on the actuator disk and the Double Multiple Stream Tube methods. The model, denoted as Multiple Actuator Block (MAB), is based on the definition, inside the computational domain, of multiple parallelepipedic blocks distributed along the path of the blades. Volumetric momentum sinks are imposed in these blocks to model the effect of the blades on the flow. The simulations with the MAB model have been compared with a complete finite volume simulation using the sliding mesh technique. This simulation requires about ten times more CPU time than the simulations using the MAB model. It has been found that the large scale features of the far wake can be reproduced using the MAB model.