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Effects of the pitch angle control on a Gurney flap-equipped vertical axis wind turbine

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Abstract

In the current study, effects of a Gurney flap and pitch angle on the aerodynamic performance of a vertical-axis wind turbine are investigated by comparing CFD results of the standard and flap-equipped wind turbines at various pitch angles. Both wind turbines show better performance at the negative pitch angles and the flap-equipped wind turbine shows higher performance than the standard one at most of the pitch angles. The best flap-equipped wind turbine obtained a 7.5 % higher power coefficient than the best standard wind turbine by varying the pitch angle. Flow analysis reveals that wind turbine’s pitch angle control and small device attachment should be implemented to make its blades remain in the pre-stall region. For the high-performance wind turbine, positive flow characteristics in terms of no formation of the vortex around the trailing edge and weak traces of the vortex have been identified.

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Abbreviations

c :

Chord length

C d :

Drag coefficient

C l :

Lift coefficient

C m :

Moment coefficient

C p :

Power coefficient

D :

Diameter of turbine

V ∞ :

Freestream velocity

α :

Angle of attack (AOA)

β :

Pitch angle

θ :

Azimuth angle

CFD :

Computational fluid dynamics

TSR :

Tip speed ratio

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (grant number: 2022R1A6A1A03056784) and Agency for Defense Development by the Korean Government (UD210033SD).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Korea Aerospace University, Goyang, 10540, Korea

    Yeain Han & Sahuck Oh

Authors
  1. Yeain Han
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  2. Sahuck Oh
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Correspondence to Sahuck Oh.

Additional information

Sahuck Oh is an Assistant Professor of the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Korea Aerospace University, Goyang, South Korea. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include wind turbine optimization, development of morphing method for the shape optimization, fluid property analysis of urban air mobilities and hyperloop system simulation and optimization.

Yeain Han is a faculty member of the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Korea Aerospace University, Goyang, South Korea. She received her B.S. degree of Mechanical Engineering from Korea Aerospace University. Her research interests include Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and wind energy.

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Han, Y., Oh, S. Effects of the pitch angle control on a Gurney flap-equipped vertical axis wind turbine. J Mech Sci Technol 37, 4057–4063 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-023-0722-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-023-0722-0

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