Abstract
Small-scale wind turbines with innovative design are introduced for small applications, providing clean renewable energy to rural homes, street lighting, and hybrid systems. Energy ball wind turbine, known as Venturi wind turbine, has untraditional blades’ shape and special aerodynamic behavior that creates a venturi effect on the air stream passing through its aspherical shape. This article represents an integration of computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel experimentation to study the aerodynamic performance of a manufactured model of energy ball wind turbine. Physical models with different twist angles were fabricated and tested in a small wind test section. In these experiments, dynamic torque, angular velocity, and coefficient of performance values were measured at different speeds. The experimental power coefficient results were discussed showing the best-tested twist angle. Fluid flow simulation has been developed in ANSYS FLUENT software. The findings of these numerical simulations have provided pressure contour, velocity contour, and torque values which help to study the solidity effect on turbine’s power coefficient. Nevertheless, the velocity contours provided from the computational analysis ensure the Venturi effect of the energy ball wind turbine design.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-15 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Advances in Mechanical Engineering |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 10 |
Early online date | 9 Oct 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2019 |
Bibliographical note
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of thisarticle: This study was supported by the British University in
Egypt and the Center for Renewable Energy.
Author contributions
E.E. prepared this manuscript. This study was carried out
under the supervision of N.E., A.A.A.F., and T.A.E.-S. All
authors carried out data analysis, discussed the results, and
contributed to writing the paper.
Keywords
- aerodynamic performance
- computational fluid dynamics
- energy ball wind turbine
- horizontal-axis wind turbine
- Small-scale wind turbines