Author(s)

Md. Sabbir Alam¹, Hiroyuki Hirahara²

¹Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan.
²Faculty of Engineering, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan.

The objective of this research is mainly focused on environment-friendly and moderately slow flapping wind turbine which can easily operate in or near urban areas or rooftops owing to scale merit with low-frequency turbine noise, installation cost, avian mortality rate and safety consideration etc. The authors are focusing on lift based (LB) slow flapping wind turbine operated within a small attack angle amplitude whereas the previous research treated a lift and drag based (LDB) flapping turbine. Here, a unique trajectory for the wing motion was yet designed by using the Chebyshev dyad linkage mechanism as well as the previous report. The wind energy transferred to the mechanical rotation, adopting a single symmetric wing NACA0012. To obtain a smooth flapping motion for the blade, we optimize all fundamental parameters with our simulation model for optimum performance of the turbine. Both static and dynamic analysis has been conducted to confirm the feasibility of the present design. In addition, wind turbine performance was studied for a suitable range of free stream wind velocities. This report confirms that the developed flapping wind turbine can drive at slow speed with suitable energy extraction rate at different wind velocities. Moreover, we made a simple comparative study of the outcomes obtained from our previous lift and drag based flapping wind turbine with present one, i.e., lift based flapping turbine.

Flapping Turbine, Chebyshev-Dyad Linkage, Angle of Attack, Unique Trajectory, Torque

Alam, M. and Hirahara, H. (2017) Performance Assessment of a Calm Flapping Wind Turbine with Small Attack Angle. Smart Grid and Renewable Energy, 8, 265-290. doi: 10.4236/sgre.2017.88018.