Simulation Analysis based Performance Comparison for Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

Traditional Savonius wind turbine has advantages such as simple structure, fast start-up, etc., however, it also has significant disadvantages of low wind energy utilization efficiency. A novel wind turbine is proposed by improving structure of Savonius wind turbine in order to increase the low wind energy utilization efficiency. To compare performance of the novel wind turbine and the Savonius wind turbines with two and three blades, two working conditions are investigated. The first is that the wind turbines work in a certain wind speed level to investigate influence of the changing load. The other is that the wind turbines work in a certain tip speed ratio level to investigate influence of environment such as wind speed changing. Considering costs of prototypes, the Computational Fluid Dynamics transient simulation method is used to achieve the analysis. The simulation results show that the novel wind turbine has high load capacities at different situation. The novel wind turbine has higher wind energy utilization efficiency and has good operating characteristics in low wind speed range than traditional Savonius wind turbines.