With the rising fossil-fuel prices, energy scarcity and climate-change, renewable energy plays an important role in producing local, clean and inexhaustible energy source to supply world rising demand for electricity. The selection of suitable wind turbine plays a vital role for urban power generation where wind is characterised by unsteadiness and turbulence. Thus, blade aerodynamics of wind turbine has a significant effect on turbine efficiency.
In this study, the aerodynamic aspect of a straight bladed Darrieus turbine is numerically analyzed. Two dimensional numerical modelling and simulation of unsteady flow through the rotor blades (NACA 0018) of the turbine is performed using ANSYS FLUENT 14.5. The unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equation is used to demonstrate the effects on the performance of two dimensional Darrieus turbine blade. The Shear Stress Transport (SST) k-ω model has been adopted for the turbulence closure. For the proposed analysis, the flow field characteristics are investigated at different azimuthal angle and tip speed ratio. Further, the parametric quantities such as solidity, number of blades and blade thickness have being investigated for a uniform free stream velocity of 6 m/s. The effect of laminar boundary layer separation on performance of the Darrieus turbine has also been taken into account during the study of flow physics around the blade. The results obtained are compared with the reported experimental and computational data.
