Effect of Turbine Blades Transformation on Savonius Turbine Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the transformation of savonius turbine blades using the Cp-TSR curve. The transformation referred to here is the change in the angular of the blade so that the area of the cross section of the blade moving downwind changes, by doing so the negative torque of the turbine obtained from the air flow is reduced. The specimen has 3 variations, namely, without transformation or conventional turbine and transformation of 5 and 10 degrees. With the reduction in the cross sectional area of the turbine blades, the authors hypothesize that the turbine performance will increase, but the blade transformation movement causes a shift in the center of mass which gives rise to vibrations that can directly affect turbine performance, and it could be that the negative  effect from these vibrations is much greater than the positive effect from reducing torque. Experiments were carried out using wind tunnels with load variations at 5, 6, and 7 m/s speed variations. The experimental results obtained show that conventional turbines have better performance than turbines with 5o and 10o blade transformations.