Improvement Of A Small Wind Turbine With Curtaining

This research aims at improving the performance of Savonius wind turbine with CFD method. In previous studies, a curtaining arrangement was introduced through wind tunnel experiences. As an addition, numerical simulations on more parameters of the curtain have been conducted in this study.This study contains three phases. Firstly, a numerical model has been built and simulated with the help of FLUENT. Secondly, the model has been thus validated by wind tunnel experimental data conducted in previous papers. Both two-dimension and three-dimension have been employed. Thirdly, three geometrical parameters, namely installation angle, length of curtain and position of curtain, are taken into consideration in this study. Influences of each parameter are analyzed through numerical simulations respectively. Static torques is compared in each case.It is shown that curtain arrangement significantly improves static torque of the Savonius wind turbine thus the efficiency. Installation angle and length of curtain are important parameters while installation position does not affect much. Curtain arrangement is found an effective methodology to increase static torque and thus improve mechanical efficiency of Savonius wind turbine.