Performance Analysis of S-Shaped Helical Wind Turbine (SHWT)

Abstract

In this study we present an experimental and numerical investigation for the performance of a specially designed S-Shaped Helical Wind Turbine (SHWT). The study is carried out for single blade & double blade turbines with three different helical angles; namely (90, 120 & 180 degree). The turbines fabricated from ply wood with 0.6 m diameter, 0.7 m length and 2 cm thickness. Experiments are performed using 0.8×0.8 m2 wind tunnel cross section area at a constant wind speed of 8 m/sec. Experiments are performed to obtain the turbine performance for the several considered designs and comparing between them. Numerical analysis using computer software “Ansys V14.5” is used to develop single blade turbine with helical profile 90 angle degree to study the velocity and pressure contours. This aims to compare the results with the obtained experimentally for the verification of the selected model. Several results are obtained for the selected designs. It is found that, within the tested range, the double blade turbine with helical angle of 120 degree has the highest performance compared with the other configurations. The obtained Power Coefficient (Cp) is 0.12 at Tip Speed Ratio (TSR) of 0.52. Double blade S-Shaped Helical Wind Turbines SHWT has higher torque coefficient than single blade at the same helical profile and the single and double blade S-Shaped Helical Wind Turbine SHWT at helical profile 180 degree has the lowest performance and torque coefficient compared to other SHWT turbines, where single blade at 180 degree the power coefficient is 0.058, torque coefficient 0.24 and the double blade at 180 degree the power coefficient is 0.0853, torque coefficient is 0.28.