Unsteady Navier-Stokes studies on loads, wake and dynamic stall characteristics of a two-bladed vertical axis wind turbine

TL;DR

This study uses CFD to analyze the unsteady flow, loads, wake, and dynamic stall behavior of a two-bladed vertical axis wind turbine at various tip speed ratios, validating results against experimental data.

Contribution

It provides detailed CFD analysis of VAWT unsteady aerodynamics, including wake and dynamic stall characteristics, validated with experimental data.

Findings

CFD results agree well with experiments at low tip speed ratios

Wake becomes Gaussian at five rotor radii downstream

Dynamic stall occurs at smaller tip speed ratios

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies are carried out on a two-bladed vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) operating at a wind speed of 8 m/s for the tip speed ratios ($\lambda$) of 0.50 - 3.0. The blade consists of the NACA 0021 airfoil with the chord length of 0.265 m and a rotor radius of 1 m. Basic sensitivity studies for various time step sizes are carried out. The results are validated against available measurement data from literature. An excellent agreement is obtained for small $\lambda$ up to optimum condition. For the higher tip speed ratios, the two dimensional CFD computations predict higher results than the wind tunnel experiment, but they are very similar to the field measurement data. Wake characteristics are presented in the present studies, showing that the wake becomes Gaussian at 5 times radius downsteam of the rotor. It is shown that complex flow phenomena occur due to dynamic stall onset especially for the smaller tip speed ratio.