Biomimetic Stator Vane Design for Radial Turbines in Waste Heat Recovery Applications
Fuhaid Alshammari, Ibrahim Alatawi, Muapper Alhadri
TL;DR
This paper shows how copying the shape of bird feathers in turbine vanes can improve the efficiency of waste heat recovery systems.
Contribution
A biomimetic stator vane design inspired by bird feathers is introduced to enhance radial turbine performance in ORC systems.
Findings
Cambered stator vanes increased turbine power output from 388.6 kW to 394.87 kW.
System efficiency improved from 8.78% to 10.12% with the new design.
Moderate camber levels (8–12%) provided the best performance improvements.
Abstract
Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) systems are widely used for converting low-temperature waste heat into useful power, but their overall efficiency depends heavily on the turbine’s performance, particularly the stator vane design in radial turbines. This study introduces a biomimetic approach to turbine design by implementing cambered stator vanes inspired by bird feather geometry. These specially shaped vanes are added to a radial inflow turbine and compared to a traditional design that uses straight (symmetric) vanes. The new cambered design helps guide the airflow more effectively, leading to higher tangential speeds and better energy transfer. Simulations show that this design increases the turbine’s power output from 388.6 kW to 394.87 kW and improves the system’s overall efficiency from 8.78% to 10.12%. A detailed study of different camber levels found that moderate curvatures (around…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsThermodynamic and Exergetic Analyses of Power and Cooling Systems · Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Technologies · Turbomachinery Performance and Optimization