Effect of Input Velocity on the Output of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT)

Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) are finding applications in the advanced scientific fields and seem to be a promising and rapidly growing innovation. A rarely researched field regarding VAWT is on analyzing the effects of various input velocities for bidirectional wind flow on the vertical axis wind turbines due to the complex and unsteady wind flow characteristics. In the current study, three-dimensional simulations are carried out, and the static and dynamic results are then reported for different values of rotational speed. The outcomes like output velocities and pressure are analyzed for a range of input velocities in a Savonius wind turbine. Different input velocities in the range of 10 m/s, 15 m/s, 20 m/s and 25 m/s were studied. The model for the rotor was designed on Solidworks 2018, and numerical analysis was carried out for a bidirectional wind input on commercial CFD software, ANSYS Fluent v16.0. From the analysis, the output velocity and pressure graphs were plotted with respect to the input air velocity and compared.