Aero-acoustics noise evaluation of H-rotor Darrieus wind turbines

The problems aided with wind turbine noise have been one of the more studied environmental influence areas in wind energy engineering. Noise levels can be measured, but, similar to other environmental attentions, the public's perception of the noise impact of wind turbines is in part a subjective determination. The author investigated in this work the aerodynamic acoustics of one type of the VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine) which called Darrieus turbine. Darrieus turbine is suitable to be established within the densely populated city area. Therefore, the noise item is very important to investigate. In this work, Darrieus rotor has been studied numerically and aerodynamically to obtain the generated noise from blades. This work offers a method based on the FW-H (Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings) equations and its integral solutions. Time-accurate solutions can be obtained from URANS (unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes) equations. Blade shape, tip speed ratio and solidity effects have been studied in this work. The results indicated that the higher solidity and higher tip speed ratio rotors are more noisy than the normal turbines. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.