Optimal blade shape of a modified Savonius turbine using an obstacle shielding the returning blade

Due to the worldwide energy crisis, research and development activities in the field of renewable energy have been considerably increased in many countries. Wind energy is becoming particularly important. Although considerable progress have already been achieved, the available technical design is not yet adequate to develop reliable wind energy converters for conditions corresponding to low wind speeds and urban areas. The Savonius turbine appears to be particularly promising for such conditions, but suffers from a poor efficiency. The present study considers a considerably improved design in order to increase the output power of a classical Savonius turbine. In previous works, the efficiency of the classical Savonius turbine has been increased by placing in an optimal manner an obstacle plate shielding the returning blade. The present study now aims at improving further the output power of the Savonius turbine as well as the static torque, which measures the self-starting capability of the turbine. In order to achieve both objectives, the geometry of the blade shape (skeleton line) is now optimized in presence of the obstacle plate. Six free parameters are considered in this optimization process, realized by coupling an in-house optimization library (OPAL, relying in the present case on Evolutionary Algorithms) with an industrial flow simulation code (ANSYS-Fluent). The target function is the output power coefficient. Compared to a standard Savonius turbine, a relative increase of the power output coefficient by almost 40% is finally obtained at lambda = 0.7. The performance increase exceeds 30% throughout the useful operating range. Finally, the static torque is investigated and found to be positive at any angle, high enough to obtain self-starting conditions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.