An Advance Rotor Design of 1 kW Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine

Abstract

Small wind turbines can offer affordable and environmentally friendly electricity in rural and urban areas of Pakistan to achieve energy security in a distributed manner. This thesis deals with small wind turbine with a focus on rotor design of small horizontal axis wind turbine. In this thesis, detailed aerodynamic characteristics of two different rotor design of 1 kW of horizontal axis wind turbines are investigated. The baseline rotor (design 1) is developed using a multi-objective algorithm considering starting time and power coefficient as design parameters. The improved rotor (design 2) is developed considering only the peak power coefficient as design parameter. In first phase, steady-state performance of both designs is calculated using ANSYS FLUENT CFD software. The results finding indicates that power coefficient of design 2 is 11 % more efficient than the design 1 at rated wind speed. Moreover, the design 2 has also better performance in off-design conditions. In the final phase, starting time of both designs was investigated using ANSYS 6 DOF solver. Starting analysis is carried out at four different wind speed condition and it is found out that a consistent difference of two second remains between two designs which means that rotor design 1 reach to their design TSR two second earlier than rotor design 2 at every wind speed considered in the analysis . So, based on major findings, it is suggested that design 1 is more suitable for the urban environment, and design 2 is suitable for remote regions of Pakistan.