Proceedings of ICFD 10: 2010 Tenth International Congress of Fluid Dynamics December 16-19, 2010, Stella Di Mare Sea

Club Hotel, Ain Soukhna, Red Sea, Egypt

ICFD10-EG-3026
PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION OF A SAVONIUS TURBINE CONSIDERING DIFFERENT SHAPES FOR FRONTAL GUIDING PLATES

Mohamed H. Mohamed

Dominique Thevenin

Lab. of Fluid Dynamics and Technical Flows University of Magdeburg Otto von Guericke Magdeburg, Germany mohamed.mohamed@st.ovgu.de

Lab. of Fluid Dynamics and Technical Flows University of Magdeburg Otto von Guericke Magdeburg, Germany thevenin@ovgu.de

ABSTRACT

The present study considers an improved design in order to increase the output power and the static torque of the classical Savonius turbine. This turbine would be very promising as wind energy converter for conditions corresponding to low wind speeds and urban areas, if a higher efciency and better self-starting capability can be obtained. To achieve these objectives and quantify the available increase in performance, the position and shape of an obstacle shielding the returning blade as well as the position and shape of a deector guiding the wind toward the advancing blade of the Savonius turbine are optimized. A comparative study has been conducted between at guiding plates (involving eight free parameters) and curved guiding plates (with fourteen free parameters), in order to obtain the best possible performance from a classical Savonius turbine. The underlying, automatic optimization is carried out by coupling an in-house optimization library (OPAL) with an industrial ow simulation code (ANSYSFluent). The optimization process takes into account the output power coefcient as single target function, considers 8 (resp. 14) parameters determining the position and the shape of the guiding plates as optimization variables, and relies on Evolutionary Algorithms. A considerable im1

provement of the Savonius turbine performance can be obtained in this manner. In the best conguration the power coefcient is increased by 48% compared with the classical turbine without frontal guiding plates.
KEYWORDS

Savonius rotor, Wind energy conversion, Optimization, Evolutionary Algorithms, Turbomachines.

1 Introduction

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as electricity, using wind turbines. At the end of 2008, worldwide nameplate capacity of wind-powered generators was 121.2 GW. At that time, wind power accounted for roughly 1.5% of worldwide electricity usage. This amount is growing rapidly, having doubled between 2005 and 2008. Several countries have achieved relatively high levels of wind power penetration, such as 19% of stationary electricity production in Denmark, 11% in Spain and Portugal, and 7% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland. As of May 2009, eighty countries around the world are using wind power on a commercial basis [1]. Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

Nomenclature

2 The Savonius Turbine

A Cp Cm d D H Ld Lo N P R r T U

Projected area of rotor (DH ), m2 Power coefcient (P/[1/2AU 3 ]) Torque coefcient (T /[R2 HU 2 ]) Blade chord (2r), m Turbine diameter (2R), m Blade height, m Deector length, m Obstacle length, m Rotational speed of rotor, rpm Output power (2NT /60), W Tip radius of turbine, m Blade radius of semi-cylindrical blade, m Output torque, Nm Mean wind velocity in axial direction, m/s Obstacle angle, ( ) Deector angle, ( ) Velocity coefcient Density, kg/m3 rotor angle, ( ) Angular speed, 1/s

S.J. Savonius initially developed the vertical axis Savonius rotor in the late 1920s. The concept of the Savonius rotor is based on cutting a cylinder into two halves along the central plane and then moving the two half cylinders sideways along the cutting plane, so that the cross-section resembles the letter S (Fig. 1, [2]).

Figure 1.

Conventional Savonius rotor.

The Savonius rotor, which is a slow-running vertical axis wind machine (typically used for 1.0 or below, see Eq. 1) has unfortunately a poor efciency when considering the standard design: theoretically, Cp 0.2 at best [3]. Nevertheless, it presents many advantages for specic applications, in particular due to its simplicity, resulting robustness, compactness and low cost. If a higher efciency could be obtained, the Savonius rotor could become a very interesting complementary source of electricity.
3 Performance of a Savonius Turbine

Using the notations of Fig. 2, the velocity coefcient is dened as: = R/U (1)

The storage and distribution of electrical power is still a major problem, in particular when the generated quantity is varying considerably with time and location, like is the case for wind energy. A local electricity production, within urban areas, would help solve this issue. The Savonius turbine appears in principle to be particularly promising for such conditions, since it is a slow-running machine with a very compact and robust design.
2

For a Savonius rotor of height H , a wind of incoming velocity U , the mechanical power P and the mechanical torque on the axis of a Savonius turbine can respectively be written as follows: Cp = P RHU 3 (2)

Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

and Cm = T R2 HU 2 (3)

up to now due to the resulting, very high computational needs. This is the main subject of the present paper. Building on top of our previous results, the plate shape will be optimized in the present work, in order to improve the performance of the classical Savonius rotor in two steps: 1. First, the position and angle of two at guiding plates (obstacle and deector) will be optimized for the conventional Savonius turbine (Fig. 3). 2. In a second step, the shape of curved guiding plates will be optimized as well (Fig. 4), before comparing the results obtained in both cases. Such a performance comparison must consider as well the additional manufacturing complexity induced by proled shapes.

where Cp and Cm are respectively the power coefcient and the torque coefcient. In the following sections, a rotor is called a conventional Savonius rotor if semi-cylinder blades are used without any ow guiding plates.

Xdf2

Xdf1

Ydf2

Deflector

Figure 2.

Schematic description and main parameters characterizing a

Wind
Yf1

Ydf1

Advancing Blade
Xf1>R
X
(0,0)

Savonius rotor.
Obstacle

Yf2

Xf2>R

4 Purpose of the Present Work

Returning Blade

The conventional, two-blade conguration of the rotor has been extensively studied in the past [4]. The corresponding values of Cp and Cm have been determined numerically and sometimes experimentally as a function of the speed ratio . This has been used to validate extensively our numerical procedure by comparison with published, reference data [57]. These previous studies have demonstrated that Savonius turbines show considerable drawbacks compared to conventional turbines, in particular a low efciency and poor starting characteristics. Previous investigations of our research group have shown that an obstacle plate placed appropriately in front of the turbine might increase its efciency [5, 8]. Using an additional deector plate is very promising to increase the global performance of the Savonius turbine [9]. Using contoured plate shapes instead of at plates might be even more promising. Nevertheless, optimizing such a conguration requires considerably more degrees of freedom and could therefore not be considered
3

Figure 3.

Schematic description of the geometry of a Savonius turbine

with at frontal guiding plates.

The optimization process nally relies on free design variables that describe the position and angles of the at plates in the rst step, while they represent the plate shapes in the second step (compare Fig. 3 and Fig. 4). The objective function considers only one output of the simulation, which should be maximized: the output power coefcient Cp .
5 Optimization Methodology

Optimization is a body of mathematical results and numerical methods for nding and identifying the best candidate from a collection of alternatives, without having to explicitly enumerate and evaluate all possible cases. Optimization is a key engineering task, since the function of Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

Xd1 Xd2 Xd3 Xd4

Yd1 Yd3

Advancing Blade
X4>R
X

Wind
Y4

Yd2

Yd4

(0,0)

Y2

Y3

Y1
X3>R X2>R X1>R

Returning Blade

Figure 4.

Schematic description of the geometry of a Savonius turbine

Figure 5. pling. Schematic description of optimizer (OPAL) and CFD code cou-

with curved frontal guiding plates.

any engineer is to design new, better, more efcient, and less expensive systems as well as to devise plans and procedures for an improved operation of existing systems. Nevertheless, such a real optimization relying on suitable algorithmic procedures is still a relatively new approach, in particular when considering turbomachines [10, 11]. The central goal when designing an improved Savonius turbine is to achieve high efciency, i.e., high power output. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that turbomachines often operate outside the nominal (or design) conditions. Therefore, after optimizing the congurations for the maximum output power coefcient, known to occur for a speed ratio 0.7, the full range of speed ratios will be considered. In our group, a considerable experience is available concerning the mathematical optimization relying on evaluations based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) [12]. We therefore employ our own optimization library, OPAL (for OPtimization ALgorithms), containing many different optimization techniques. Different CFD solvers (in-house codes, ANSYS-Fluent, ANSYS-CFX) have been coupled in the past with this optimizer. It has already been employed successfully to improve a variety of applications like heat exchangers [13], burners [14] or turbomachines [5, 8, 15, 16]. These studies have in particular demonstrated the efciency of evolutionary algorithms (EA) for CFD-based optimization. Using EA, a very robust procedure can be obtained and local extremal values do not falsify the results [17, 18]. Therefore, the present
4

study relies again on EA with a population size of 20 in the rst generation. The optimization process stopped automatically after 20 generations in both cases, since the observed progress in the objective function falls below a userprescribed threshold. When computing a new generation from the previous one, a survival probability of 50%, an averaging probability of 33.3% and a crossover probability of 16.7% (total 100%) are implemented. In the additional mutation step, a mutation probability of 100% with decreasing mutation amplitude is considered. All further details can be found elsewhere [5], where the same procedure has been applied to a simpler conguration. A fully automatic optimization nally takes place, using OPAL (decision-maker for the congurations to investigate), the commercial tool Gambit for geometry and grid generation (including quality check) and the industrial CFD code ANSYS-Fluent to compute the ow eld around the Savonius turbine. As a result of the CFD computation the output power coefcient is determined, and is stored in a result le. The procedure is automated using journal scripts (to start Gambit, Fluent) and a master program written in C, calling all codes in the right sequence as shown in Fig. 5. By checking the values stored in the result le, OPAL is able to decide how to modify the input parameters before starting a new iteration. The fully coupled optimization procedure is a complex task, which has been described in detail in previous publications [1214]. Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

Numerical Flow Simulations

7 CFD Validation

From the literature it is known that an accurate CFD simulation of the ow around a Savonius turbine is a challenging task, mainly due to its highly time-dependent nature and to the fact that ow separation plays an important role for the efciency of the system. It is therefore necessary to check the full numerical procedure with great care. Afterwards, the resulting methodology must be validated. All ow simulations presented in this work rely on the industrial software ANSYS-Fluent 6.3. The unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved using the SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Method for Pressurelinked Equations) algorithm for pressure-velocity coupling. The ow variables and all turbulent quantities are discretized in a nite volume formulation using a secondorder upwind scheme. For the present conguration, twodimensional simulations are sufcient (no geometry change in the third direction when excluding boundary effects), so that very ne grids can be employed. The unsteady ow is solved by using the Sliding Mesh Model (SMM). Three complete revolutions are always computed, using a constant time-step; the rst one is used to initiate the correct ow solution, while the ow properties (in particular the power coefcient Cp and the torque coefcient Cm ) are obtained by averaging the results during the last two revolutions. On a standard PC, one evaluation (i.e., three revolutions for one specic conguration) takes about 280 minutes of computing time. A grid-independence study has been rst carried out for one geometrical conguration. Several different twodimensional, unstructured grids of increasing density and quality, composed of 5, 000 up to 120, 000 cells, have been tested for the standard Savonius turbine with a specied obstacle plate. All grids employing more than 80, 000 cells lead to a relative variation of the output quantity below 1.3% [9]. Since the cost of a CFD evaluation obviously increases rapidly with the number of grid cells, the intermediate grid range between 85, 000 and 95, 000 cells has been retained for all further results shown in the present paper. The minimum size of the computational domain has been checked in a separate project [6, 7]. It has been found that a domain half size equal to 27 times the rotor radius is needed to get a result independent from any inuence of the boundary conditions. This is in agreement with previous studies, mostly recommending 20 times the rotor radius on each side of the turbine. 5

After an acceptable grid and domain size have been identied, the full numerical procedure and in particular the employed turbulence model have been validated by comparison with published experimental results for a classical Savonius turbine [19]. The inuence of the turbulence model is shown in Fig. 6. These results demonstrate the excellent agreement obtained between CFD and experiments for the target function, Cp , when using the realizable k turbulence model. A similar tendency has been observed for other studies involving cambered blades [15, 16], proving the interest of the realizable k model for fast CFD simulations. The fact that the Reynolds Stress Model does not lead to an improvement compared to standard twoequation models is probably a result of its higher sensitivity toward inow turbulent boundary conditions [15], which are usually not measured in the experiments. The near-wall treatment relies on standard wall functions. The y+ -values found near all walls in the employed grid are around 60 and fall therefore within the recommended range for best-practice CFD (30 < y+ < 300). A boundary layer grid is employed near the surfaces. Since many different congurations must be evaluated during the optimization, the computing time associated with one single CFD computation must be kept acceptable. As a consequence, only three rotor revolutions are considered, using an appropriate, constant value of the time-step. The rst revolution is only used to initiate a correct ow solution, while the interesting ow properties (in particular the power coefcient Cp and the torque coefcient Cm ) are obtained by averaging the CFD results during the two further revolutions. We have checked separately the inuence of the number of revolutions on the computed turbine performance for the optimal design [7, 20], by pursuing the CFD simulation. After 10 revolutions, the average power coefcient reaches a constant value. The difference in Cp obtained with 3 or 10 revolutions is always below 6% (relative change); the relative change between the second and the third revolution is below 1.3%. Both values are very small compared to the range of Cp explored during the optimization process and give an estimation of the uncertainty associated with the present simulations. Finally, only three revolutions have been computed for each design in order to reduce the needed computational time. Figure 7 shows that the expected variation of the ow coefcients with time is already achieved after completion of the rst revolution. Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

0.5 0.45

Torque Coefficient (Cm), [-]

(a)

Torque coefficient (Cm)

0.4 0.35 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 0.2 0.4 0.6

Exp. T. Hayashi et al (2005) Realizable k-e model SST-model Standard k-e model RSM model

0.4

1 revolution

st

2 revolution

nd

3 revolution

th

-0.4

-0.8

-1.2

l=0.3
-1.6 0 2 4 6

Time, [sec]
0.8 1 1.2 1.4

Figure 7.

Obtained time course of the instantaneous torque coefcient

Speed ratio (l) (b)

0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15

during the rst 3 revolutions.

Power coefficient (Cp)

= 0.7, considering a xed incident wind velocity U = 10 m/s. This value of is retained since it is known from the literature that it corresponds to the zone of peak power coefcient of the conventional Savonius turbine.
8.1 Optimization for at guiding plates

0.1 0.05 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4

Speed ratio (l)

Figure 6. Validation of computational model: a) torque coefcient, b) power coefcient, both compared to published experimental results for a conventional Savonius turbine [19].

For the present problem (monotonic evolution of Cp vs. number of revolutions), the result of the third revolution could be also used alone, leading to a slightly better estimation of the nal value.
8 Results and Discussions

The mathematical optimization procedure described previously (Evolutionary Algorithms relying on automated evaluations through CFD) can now be employed to nd the optimal position of both guiding plates, the gap width and the blade shape. This is done rst for a constant speed ratio
6

As explained previously, eight degrees of freedom are left simultaneously for the optimization in this rst step: Xd f 1 , Yd f 1 , Xd f 2 , Yd f 2 , X f 1 , Y f 1 , X f 2 and Y f 2 dene the position of the at guiding plates (Fig. 3). The objective function contains one single output of the simulation, which should be maximized as far as possible: the power coefcient Cp . The parameter space considered in the optimization has been dened as documented in Table 1. These domains are selected to prevent any domain overlap along the Y -direction, while at the same time opening a wide exploration region for the optimization process. The results presented in Fig. 8 indicate that the considered objective is indeed considerably inuenced by the eight free parameters. As a whole, 210 different geometrical settings have been evaluated by CFD, requesting 40 days of total computing time on a standard PC. Note that the user-waiting time could be considerably reduced by carrying out the requested CFD on a more powerful computer or in parallel on a PC cluster [12]. Such a parallel procedure, already implemented in OPAL, has not been used in the present case but could reduce the needed time by orders of magnitude, as demonstrated in other studies. Relying on parallel computers and possibly carrying out each CFD Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

Table 1.

Acceptable range for the input parameters (parameter space)

for at guiding plates

Parameter Guiding plates Xd f 1 /d Yd f 1 /d Xd f 2 /d Yd f 2 /d X f 1 /d Y f 1 /d X f 2 /d Y f 2 /d

Minimum

Maximum

parameter values found by optimization are listed in Table 2 and these optimum parameters lead to corresponding angles of 92.3 and 82.1 for obstacle and deector, respectively. The lengths of the guiding plates are Lo d = 1.094 and Ld d = 0.782, as shown in Fig. 9.
Table 2. Optimum conguration for the at guiding plates

1.04 0.9 1.66 1.3 1.66 0.78 1.66 1.66

0 1.87 0 1.87 0.9 0 0.9 0.53

Parameter Guiding plates Xd f 1 /d Yd f 1 /d Xd f 2 /d Yd f 2 /d X f 1 /d

value

-0.066981 1.509671 -0.17377 2.28434 -1.134209 -0.286166 -1.0892 -1.37918

Optimal configuration for flat guiding plates

Xdf1/d 0.0 Ydf1/d 1.87 Xdf2/d 0.0 Ydf2/d 1.87 Xf1/d -0.9 Yf1/d 0 Xf2/d -0.9 Yf2/d -0.53

Y f 1 /d X f 2 /d Y f 2 /d

Cp
0.36

0.349

Ld

Conventional Savonius
0.182
-1.04 0.9 -1.66 1.3 -1.66 -0.78 -1.66 -1.66 0.18

opt.

Wind
Figure 8. Flat guiding plates: Input parameters of the optimization and power coefcient represented using parallel coordinates. The parameters of the optimal designs are connected with a thick red line. The power coefcient of the conventional turbine is shown with a black circle.

Lo

opt.

evaluation again in parallel [12] is clearly necessary when considering three-dimensional problems. Fortunately, it is quite straightforward to implement, so that researchers having access to parallel clusters can solve corresponding problems within an acceptable lapse of time. The optimal conguration (highest point in the right column in Fig. 8, all corresponding parameters being connected by a thick red line) can now readily be identied for = 0.7. The corresponding geometry is shown in Fig. 9. The optimum
7

Figure 9.

Optimum conguration for at guiding plates.

At = 0.7 the optimal points found by the optimization procedure with at guiding plates corresponds to an absolute increase of the power coefcient by 0.167 compared with the conventional Savonius turbine. As a whole, this means a relative increase of the performance (measured by Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

the power output coefcient) by 48% for the optimum design.

8.2 Optimization for curved guiding plates

Table 3.

Acceptable range for the input parameters (parameter space)

for non-at guiding plates

Parameter Deector Xd 1 /d Xd 2 /d Yd 2 /d Xd 3 /d Yd 3 /d Xd 4 /d Yd 4 /d Obstacle X1 /d X2 /d Y2 /d X3 /d Y3 /d X4 /d Y4 /d In a second step, more complex shapes are considered. Fourteen free parameters describe the non-at guiding plates; the obstacle plate shape is described by four movable points (P1 , P2 , P3 and P4 ). These points can change position, as described by two coordinates (XPi , YPi ). This leads as a whole to seven free parameters (X1 , X2 , Y2 , X3 , Y3 , X4 and Y4 ), while Y1 has been kept as found in the previous section: Y1 /d = 1.37918 (Fig. 4). Additional seven free parameters are considered simultaneously in order to optimize the shape of the deector. These seven parameters dene the four movable points used to describe the deector shape (Xd 1 , Xd 2 , Yd 2 , Xd 3 , Yd 3 , Xd 4 and Yd 4 ). Again, the parameter Yd 1 is taken from the previous section: Yd 1 /d = 2.28434 (Fig. 4). Knowing all 4 points for each plate (obstacle and deector), the full prole is reconstructed using standard splines (Nonuniform rational B-splines, NURBS). The order of a NURBS curve denes the number of nearby control points that inuence any given point on the curve. The curve is represented mathematically by a polynomial of degree one less than the order of the curve. This means that the spline order is 4 in our case and the degree of the polynomial is 3. The objective function contains one single output of the simulation, that should be maximized as far as possible: the power coefcient Cp . The parameter space considered in the optimization has been dened as documented in Table 3. These domains are selected to prevent any domain overlap along the Y direction, to keep realistic plate shapes and to cover a wide region for positioning the guiding plates. The reference point for the parameter space parameters (non-at guiding plates) is the global center of turbine rotation. During the calculations, a circular turbine shaft is included with a radius Rsh computed from Rsh /d = 0.03. The results in Fig. 10 indicate that the considered objective is again strongly inuenced by the fourteen free parameters, (Xd 1 , Xd 2 , Yd 2 , Xd 3 , Yd 3 , Xd 4 , Yd 4 , X1 , X2 , Y2 , X3 , Y3 , X4 and Y4 ), and thus by the positions and shapes of the guiding plates. As a whole, 210 different geometrical settings have been evaluated by CFD, requesting 40 days of total computing time on a standard PC. The optimal conguration (highest point in the right column in Fig. 10, all 8

Minimum

Maximum

1.5 1.5 2 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.15

0 0 2.4 0 2 0 1.5

1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1 1.5 0.5

0.8 1.15 1 1.15 0.5 1.15 0

corresponding parameters being connected by a thick red line) can now readily be identied for = 0.7. The corresponding geometry is shown in Fig. 11. The optimum parameter values are listed in Table 4. At = 0.7 the optimal point found by the optimization procedure corresponds to an absolute increase of the power coefcient by 0.179 compared with the conventional Savonius turbine. As a whole, this means a relative increase of the performance (measured by the power output coefcient) by 49.6% for the optimum design.
8.3 Off-design performance

It is now important to check how this gain would change as a function of , since such turbines must be able to work also for off-design conditions. Therefore, the performance of the optimal congurations have been nally Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

Optimal conf. ( Savonius with curved guiding plates )

Xd2/d Xd1/d Xd3/d Yd2/d Xd4/d Yd3/d X1/d Yd4/d Y2/d X2/d Y3/d X3/d Y4/d X4/d

Table 4.

Optimal conguration for curved guiding plates

-0.8

-1

-0.5

Cp

Parameter Deector Xd 1 /d Xd 2 /d Yd 2 /d Xd 3 /d Yd 3 /d Xd 4 /d
Classical Savonius

Value

2.4

1.5

-1.15

-1.15

-1.15

0.37

0.361

0.87698 0.43133 1.82404 0.473378 1.4934 1.27984 1.124731

Yd 4 /d Obstacle X1 /d X2 /d Y2 /d X3 /d Y3 /d X4 /d Y4 /d

0.182
-1.5 -1.5 2 -1.5 1.5 -1.5 1.15 -1.5 -1.5 -1.5 -1.5 -1 -1.5 -0.5 0.18

1.24971 1.117381 0.92582 1.10331 0.6874 1.01867 0.30194

Figure 10.

Curved guiding plates: Input parameters of the optimization

and power coefcient represented using parallel coordinates. The parameters of the optimal design are connected with a thick red line. The power coefcient of the conventional turbine is shown with a black circle.

Optimal deflector shape

Optimal obstacle shape

Figure 11. Optimum conguration for curved guiding plates.

computed for the full range of useful -values, as shown in Fig. 12. This gure demonstrates that the improvement of both torque coefcient and power output coefcient is observed throughout for all values of for the optimal congura9

tions (at as well as curved guiding plates), compared to the conventional Savonius turbine. In Fig. 12 the operating range obtained with at guiding plates is wider than with curved ones. Additionally, the at guiding plates lead to a better performance for large speed ratios ( > 1.1) compared to the non-at guiding plates. The relative performance increase compared to the standard Savonius conguration is always higher than 40% in the usual operating range (0.6 1), demonstrating again the interest of the optimized congurations. As a whole, by comparing the results obtained with the at and non-at guiding plates, the slight gain in power coefcient obtained for low values of with curved guiding plates does not appear to balance the additional geometrical complexity, in particular when considering that at guiding plates lead to a higher performance at large -values. As a consequence, it is recommended to keep at guiding plates for further studies. Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

(a)
0.8 0.7

Torque coefficient (Cm)

0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6

Optimal conf. (Sav. with flat guiding plates) %Relative increase (Sav. with flat guiding plates) Optimal conf. (Sav. with non-flat guiding plates) %Relative increase (Sav. with non-flat guiding plates) Conventional Savonius turbine

0.8

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

Speed ratio (l)

0.7 0.6

only plotted for between 0 and 180 . Compared to the classical Savonius without guiding plates, these computations demonstrate that the optimal design (Savonius with at guiding plates) has a considerable and positive effect on the static torque coefcient. The conventional Savonius design shows large variations of the static torque coefcient as a function of , and in particular negative values around = 140 170 (no self-starting), as conrmed by our own CFD computations. In the present, optimal conguration (Savonius with at guiding plates) the negative torque region completely disappears. A self-starting capability (Cms > 0) is always obtained at any angle in both cases, which is a major advantage. Apart from that, the evolution as a function of is relatively similar to that obtained with the conventional shape.
100
Exp. T. Hayashi et al (2005) (no obstacle)

(b)

Power coefficient (Cp)

80 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 40 60

Relative increase (%)

Static Torque Coefficient (Cms)

1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

Our CFD results: Savonius with flat guiding plates Savonius without guiding plates

20

Speed ratio (l)

Figure 12. Performance of the optimized congurations (green and blue) compared to the conventional Savonius turbine (black line): a) torque coefcient; b) power coefcient. The corresponding relative increase compared to the standard conguration is shown with red and gray lines.

Negative torque (no self-starting) -0.2 0 30 60 90 120 150 180

Rotor angle (q)

Figure 13. Static torque coefcient Cms as a function of the xed rotor for the optimal conguration (Savonius with at guiding plates)

9 Self-starting capability

angle

One important issue associated with wind energy is the self-starting capability of the system. For decentralized, low-cost applications as considered here, it is essential to obtain a self-starting system. To investigate this issue, the static torque exerted on a turbine at a xed angle has been computed by CFD as a function of this angle . Figure 13 shows the obtained static torque coefcient Cms obtained for the optimal congurations compared to the classical turbine, as a function of . The experimental results of [19] for a conventional turbine are also shown for comparison in Fig. 13. Due to periodicity, the results are

compared to the conventional Savonius turbine. For this last case, the experimental results of [19] are also shown for comparison.

10 Practical realization

From the technical point of view many existing systems already rely on a tail vane for optimal alignment into the wind direction. A similar technical solution would be used for the Savonius turbine using guiding plates. In this Copyright c 2010 by ICFD 10

10

manner the orientation of the system can be simply, efciently and automatically controlled. As a whole, the optimized conguration with at guiding plates is only slightly more complex, more expensive and heavier than the original system. Therefore, the improved power and torque coefcients should easily compensate these drawbacks within a short time after installation. It has been shown in Fig. 12 that the optimum design leads to a broader operating range. It can be in particular employed for higher speed ratios , making it attractive to exploit wind energy at higher velocity with such a vertical-axis wind turbine. Note, however, that the present study does not consider specically transient effects (wind gusts, storms), a problem common to all wind turbines and mostly leading to material limitations.

for wind energy generation, in particular in urban areas.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Ph.D. work of Mr. Mohamed is supported nancially by a bursary of the Egyptian government. Very interesting discussions with Dr. E. Pap are gratefully acknowledged.

REFERENCES

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Conclusions

The Savonius turbine is a promising concept for smallscale wind-energy systems, but suffers from a poor efciency. Therefore, the major objective of the present study is to identify an improved design, leading to higher values of the power coefcient of a Savonius turbine, thus obtaining a higher efciency. For this purpose, frontal guiding plates (at or curved) guiding the wind toward the advancing blade and shielding the returning blade are introduced. After validating the numerical procedure against experimental measurements, accurate CFD simulations of the unsteady ow around a conventional Savonius turbine have been carried out. The realizable k turbulence model can be employed for a quantitative analysis of the performance, provided a sufciently ne grid is used. The shape and position of the guiding plates have then been optimized in a fully automatic manner, in order to obtain the best possible performance, as measured by the power coefcient Cp . The optimization relies on Evolutionary Algorithms, while all geometrical congurations are evaluated by CFD. The optimization procedure is able to identify considerably better congurations than the conventional Savonius turbine, leading in particular to a relative increase of the power output coefcient by 47.8% and 49.6% for at and non-at guiding plates at = 0.7, respectively. A performance gain of at least 30% is found for the full operating range of the conventional design. At the same time, the operating range is extended up to = 1.8 using at guiding plates. Therefore, the optimal conguration involving at guiding plates appears to be very promising 11

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