NUMERICAL STUDY OF TWO VERTICAL AXIS WIND TURBINES DARRIEU TYPE LINED UP IN FUNCTION OF POWER COEFFICIENT1

Resumo

In this work is performed a numerical study of the main operational principle of a VAWT (Vertical Axis Wind turbine) and the influence of the distance between two aligned turbines over their power coefficient. The main aims here are to evaluate the applicability of the numerical model studied here in further optimization studies of VAWT and evaluate the effect of the distance between turbines (d) on the device power coefficient. To achieve these goals, it is considered an incompressible, transient and turbulent flow on a two dimensional domain with two fluid zones, one being rotational representing the rotation of the blades. The time-averaged mass conservation equations and momentum are numerically solved using the finite volume method, more precisely with the software FLUENT^Ò. For the approach of turbulence is used to classical modeling of turbulence (RANS) with standard model k - ε. Other geometric parameters: turbine radius (R), the airfoil profile (NACA0018) and chorus were held constant. The verification results showed a good agreement with those presented in the literature, even employing a simplified domain. It was also observed that the distance (d) directly affects the power of the second turbine. For the best case, with d =10m, the downstream turbine showed an approximate 50% drop in power coefficient in comparison with that obtained for the upstream turbine. While in the worst case, with d =2m, the power coefficient for the downstream turbine decreased two hundred times in comparison with that achieved for the upstream one. It was also noted that there is a great possibility of disposal area optimization of turbines in future studies.

Keywords: Vertical Axis Wind turbine, Numerical study, Power coefficient, turbine distance.