Small Scale Wind Turbine simulations

Project Support
1

Hello, i have a thesis based on the power efficiency of small scale horizontal and vertical turbines. In total i have 4, 2 identical horizontal wind turbines with 2m legth blades and another 2 savonius(H=1.88m, R=1.07m) and darius(H=2.5m, R=0.7m) with inlet air at 4 m/s. My problem is what is the best roational speed for each wind turbine to have the best performance but also keep a fair comparisson between them so i can find the best performing one?

Also i get negative moments, does that mean that i have to switch the rotational speed direction?

horizontal 1: SimScale Login

horizontal 2: SimScale Login

darius: SimScale Login

savonius: SimScale Login

2

Hi @AntonisCC, thanks for posting at our forum :slight_smile:

It would be better if we had access to your model to give better advice. To do that, just copy the link to your post and edit your original comment with it. In order for us to have access, just click the “share button” and “share with support”

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As to the negative moments, you only have to use the absolute value. The negative part probably comes from the direction of rotation of the blades!

Best,
Igor

3

I did it

4

Hi @AntonisCC,

Taking a look at your model, I have a few comments to make:

  • Talking with my teammates about your problem, we reached the conclusion that the negative moments are actually probably due to them being measured with respect to the reaction forces on the blades, so that the result is coherent
  • We think that applying a high angular speed to the blades might interfere with the results in the sense that there are limitations to the model (in reality, the wind would move the blades, in simulation, we have to set a rotation to the blades), so that we start seeing undesirable phenomena happen
  • As to the performance evaluation of the designs, that’s something that comes from the theory and we unfortunately wouldn’t be able to provide much help. We can only advise that you gather from literature the parameters you’d need for a fair comparison and take them from your simulation results. There’s also a great article on our website talking about the optimization of a Wind Farm.

Does that help? Please let us know :slight_smile: