Field-testing of model helical-bladed hydrokinetic turbines for small-scale power generation

Parag K. Talukdar, Vinayak Kulkarni and Ujjwal K. Saha

Renewable Energy, 2018, vol. 127, issue C, 158-167

Abstract: The vertical-axis helical-bladed hydrokinetic turbine serves as a viable source of renewable power that can extract kinetic energy of the free flowing water to generate electricity. Such helical-bladed turbines are characterized by lesser pulsation of torque and marginally favorable starting capability as compared to straight-bladed turbines. The present study aims at evaluating the performance of NACA 0020 bladed helical turbines of different solidity ratios. In-situ experiments of the developed turbines have been carried out in an open channel where the turbine with solidity ratio (σ) of 0.38 achieves a maximum power coefficient of 0.20 at a tip-speed ratio (TSR) of 1.02 and an inlet water velocity of 0.87 m/s. The effect of σ on the performance of different turbines is investigated at various immersion levels. For all the tested turbines, it has been observed that with the decrease of immersion levels, the power coefficient values decrease along with the optimum TSRs and this change is found to be predominant for the turbine having lowest σ = 0.31. Higher starting ability has been noticed for the helical-bladed turbine with σ = 0.38 in comparison to lower solidity ratio variants.

Keywords: Hydrokinetic turbine; NACA 0020 blade; Power coefficient; Torque coefficient; Tip-speed ratio; Solidity ratio (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148118304609
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:127:y:2018:i:c:p:158-167

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2018.04.052

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().