2D CFD ananlysis of a straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine using General Grid Interface

The temperature on earth has been recorded to be the warmest since the beginning of measurements in the year 1880, started by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Due to this, different alternatives for green energies are sought, including the wind energy. There are mainly two categories of wind turbines for harnessing wind energy, which are Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) and Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT). Straight Bladed Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (SB-VAWT) is one of the simplest types of VAWT for diversified application. To conduct performance and design analysis, detailed information regarding the forces produced by the individual blade is critical. In this regard, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is applied to conduct performance analysis of SBVAWT. The setup consists of a two-dimensional computational domain, subjected to an inlet flow velocity and the medium is assumed to be Newtonian air. The domain is composed of two parts, namely, the inner rotating cylindrical domain and outer stationary rectangular domain, connected via the GGI interface. The mesh is generated with cfMesh using the 2D Cartesian mesher. The mesh has 6 grid layers at the boundary of SB-VAWT blade achieving maximum y+ less than 1. The solution is produced by employing the 2D Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations with the commonly used k−ω Shear Stress Transport (SST) model. The case is run using ”pimpleDyMFoam” and solved using the second order Gauss linear UPWIND discretization scheme. The comparison of simulation results shows good agreement with the experimental data.