vertical axis wind turbines
 

Hi everybody, I'm currently investigating the possible applications of VAWT in urban environments. I have been researching blade design and have made a few prototypes, however this method is both time and finance consuming. I was wondering if anybody out there has tried cfd (computational fluid dynamics) software for turbine development. I'm not a physics major so something more along the 2d simple approach is what I'm looking for.

thanks....

Re: vertical axis wind turbines
 

I remember a paper on this subject at the 14th US National Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in June 2002 at Virginia Tech in blacksburg, VA. The two presenting the paper were from somewhere in the midwest, I think, and they were talking about what they planned to do rather than what they had done. It was a 2D calculation. These turbines generate their power from drag on the blades rather than lift.

I thought this would be an interesting problem and I devised a mesh to do it, but it is still on my list of things to do. My thoughts were to use a circular mesh with the (symmetric) blade in the center. Then one computes the flow field and drag as the direction and speed of the incident windfield changes corresponding to rotation of the boom carrying the blades.

You might also search the archives of this forum. I think I remember a question about VAWTs several years ago.

The VAWT has not gained much popularity because of fatigue-failure problems with the blades and they are not self-starting, but they do allow the generator to be placed at the bottom of the tower.