A novel VAWT passive flow control numerical and experimental investigations: Guided Vane Airfoil Wind Turbine

Guided Vane Airfoil was introduced as a novel passive flow control approach to control the dynamic stall of the Darrieus vertical axis wind turbine. ANSYS fluent SW tool has been used to solve the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with an SST k-omega turbulent model to investigate the effect of the Guide Vane on the aerodynamics performance of NACA 0018 airfoil. Furthermore, a parametric study has been conducted to determine the optimum vane geometry to improve the airfoil aerodynamics efficiency. Based on the 2D airfoil investigation results, the best configuration of the vane and airfoil combination have been used to numerically study the dynamic stall control of one airfoil through actual vertical axis wind turbine rotation. In addition, the vane angle relative to the airfoil has been studied in the turbine CFD investigation. For the sake of validating the new concept, a wind turbine test rig has been constructed to, experimentally, investigate the performance of the Guided Vane Airfoil wind turbine. The performance of the original wind turbine has been firstly measured and then the Guided Vane is added to the turbine blades. Based on the experimental data, about 26% increase in the maximum power output has been measured from the Guided Vane airfoil wind turbine.