A 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of the Wells Turbine

This paper deals with the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to the performance comparison of some proposed blade designs for the Well’s Turbine. The turbines were modelled at typical Reynolds numbers for full scale rigs and the results were found to correlate well with scale predictions from experimental data. Three different turbine designs were analysed, one a 4-bladed rotor and the other two 8-bladed rotors. The only difference between the two 8-bladed rotors was the addition of forward sweep to one. The addition of forward sweep was shown to have little effect on the overall performance of the 8-bladed rotor. The 4-bladed rotor was shown to have the highest efficiency and pressure drop at low flow rates, however it was also shown to have a much smaller operating range than the 8-bladed rotors.