Aerodynamic Characteristics of Airfoil and Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Employed with Gurney Flaps

Yosra Chakroun and Galih Bangga
Additional contact information
Yosra Chakroun: Institute of Aerodynamics and Gas Dynamics, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 21, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Galih Bangga: Institute of Aerodynamics and Gas Dynamics, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 21, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-22

Abstract: In the present studies, the effects of Gurney flaps on aerodynamic characteristics of a static airfoil and a rotating vertical axis wind turbine are investigated by means of numerical approaches. First, mesh and time step studies are conducted and the results are validated with experimental data in good agreement. The numerical solutions demonstrate that the usage of Gurney flap increases the airfoil lift coefficient C L with a slight increase in drag coefficient C D . Furthermore, mounting a Gurney flap at the trailing edge of the blade increases the power production of the turbine considerably. Increasing the Gurney flap height further increases the power production. The best performance found is obtained for the maximum height used in this study at 6% relative to the chord. This is in contrast to the static airfoil case, which shows no further improvement for a flap height greater than 0.5 % c . Increasing the angle of the flap decreases the power production of the turbine slightly but the load fluctuations could be reduced for the small value of the flap height. The present paper demonstrates that the Gurney flap height for high solidity turbines is allowed to be larger than the classical limit of around 2% for lower solidity turbines.

Keywords: aerodynamics; CFD; flow characteristics; gurney flap; wind energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4284/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4284/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:8:p:4284-:d:534665

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().