CFD Investigation of the Multiple Rotors Darrieus Type Turbine Performance

Abstract

The last few years have witnessed researches concerned by vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) performance considering its advantages compared to the horizontal axis wind turbines, as it can be operated in urban areas without producing noise, ease of maintenance and simple construction, in addition to its low cost. More interest is growing in developing efficient clusters of VAWT in order to increase power generation at specific sites by using multiple turbines. In the present work, the performance of various configurations of Darrieus type VAWT clusters is examined using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The objective of this work is to increase the overall power coefficient of the turbines cluster compared to single rotor performance. This objective shall be achieved by examining mutual interactions between rotors arranged in close proximity and examining the effect of oblique angle between rotors on overall performance of the cluster of rotors. The performance is assessed by observing the overall power coefficient of the cluster. Also, the velocity wake of the simulated three rotors turbine cases was analyzed and compared to the that of the single rotor.