Numerical Study on Aerodynamic Performance of Different Forms of Adaptive Blades for Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

The wind energy exploitation technique has been developed very quickly in recent years. The vertical axis wind turbine is a hot research domain due to several advantages: low noise, flexible for installation, ease of maintenance, great safety and credibility, etc. The aerodynamic performances of different forms of airfoils including an active deformation airfoil and a fluid-solid coupling passive airfoil with two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) cases have been investigated numerically in this paper. Firstly, the aerodynamic performances of the airfoils with the maximum deformation amplitudes of their cambers which are 3%, 5% and 7% of the chord length have been discussed, respectively, with the angles of attack in the range of 0° and 20°. Secondly, for the angle of attack set at 18°, the two-way fluid-solid coupling simulations with the Young’s Modulus of 1 Mpa and 2 Mpa have also been investigated. Results show that: (1) for the pseudo 3D and real 3D single active deformation airfoil cases, the lift coefficients increase as the maximum deformation amplitudes augment from 3% to 7% of the chord length at the same angle of attack. With the same maximum deformation amplitude, when the angles of attack increase from 0° to 20°, the lift coefficients which increase firstly and then decrease are bigger than that of the original NACA0012 airfoil. When the maximum deformation amplitude of the pseudo 3D airfoil reaches 5% of the chord length, a relatively good aerodynamic performance with better inhibition effect of vortex generation can be obtained. The 3D vortex distribution demonstrates that the deformable airfoil has a better vortex generation controlling effect at the middle cross-section along the spanwise direction than the non-deformable airfoil. (2) From the aspect of fluid-solid coupling, the lift increases and the drag decreases so that the lift to drag ratio has a big improvement when the Young’s Modulus is equal to 1 Mpa and 2 Mpa. The deformable airfoil can inhibit the generation and the shedding of the surface vortex when the fluid-solid coupling effect is considered.