Large Eddy Simulations on Vertical Axis Hydrokinetic Turbines - Power coefficient analysis for various solidities

N. Guillaud, G. Balarac, E. Goncalvès and J. Zanette

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 147, issue P1, 473-486

Abstract: Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are performed on a Vertical Axis Hydrokinetic Turbine (VAHT) at two different solidities, so as to enable a more complete physical description of the flow than for classic statistical calculations. To analyze the turbine performances, local quantities are defined to evaluate the contribution of the different turbine elements to the global VAHT power coefficient. For a deeper analysis of the major losses, the real turbine is also compared with an ideal turbine composed of only three infinite blades. It is observed that the ideal turbine with the lower solidity provides the best performance, but the losses due to the blade tips and the arms strongly increase for the real turbine at the same solidity. Consequently, for the considered real turbine, there is no clear gain to decrease the solidity. Simulations of the ideal turbine are performed for various solidities at their optimal Tip Speed Ratio (TSR) to study the evolution of optimal power coefficient as a function of solidity. A maximum power coefficient is obtained for a small value of the solidity. This is explained because the optimal TSR of this optimal solidity leads to angles of incidences on the blade which avoid a penalizing dynamic stall phenomenon but are high enough to produce an important positive torque The design of an efficient turbine has then to limit losses, to be able to use small solidity and then to avoid dynamic stall phenomenon by having a high optimal TSR.

Keywords: Vertical axis hydrokinetic turbines; Tip speed ratio; Solidity; Large eddy simulations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119312261
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:147:y:2020:i:p1:p:473-486

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.08.039

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 ().