TITLE:
Performance Improvement by Control of Wingtip Vortices for Vertical Axis Type Wind Turbine
AUTHORS:
Shigeru Ogawa, Yusuke Kimura
KEYWORDS:
Vertical Axis Type Wind Turbine, Wingtip Vortex, Magnus Effect
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Fluid Dynamics,
Vol.8 No.3,
September
27,
2018
ABSTRACT: The present paper describes control of wingtip vortices generated by vertical
type wind turbine. The wind turbine consists of three circular cylinders. Each
cylinder rotates on its own vertical axis and moves in orbit. It is known that
wingtip vortices give rise to decrease of power generation performance as well
as aerodynamic noise. Therefore, the goal of the study is to control wingtip
vortices and to improve power generation performance. Numerical study was
conducted for 14 models to find out control factors to suppress wingtip vortices.
Numerical simulation visualized wingtips by streamlines as well as
pressure distribution on the circular cylinder for evaluating Magnus effect. As
a result, the following findings were obtained: 1) Installation of fully covered
protection plates at both ends of the circular cylinder blades is greatly effective
to suppress the wingtip vortices. 2) Curved wings attached to each cylinder
are more effective to enhance power generation efficiency than flat
ones, due to great increase in Magnus effect caused by large pressure difference
on both sides of the curved wing. The power efficiency of the optimized
model was improved up to 2.8%, which means 11 times that of the original
model.