Abstract:

An active flow control mechanism is proposed to improve the efficiency of the energy extraction for the vertical axis wind turbine. The proposed system consists of a vertical axis wind turbine with flexible blades. The conception is inspired from the vortex control mechanism utilized by the aero-/aqua animals to improve their performance via the flexion of their fins. The viscous non-stationary flow around the turbine is simulated using the ANSYS-FLUENT 15 software. The complex flapping motion is reproduced using a dynamic mesh technique and a user-defined function. The results show that, with this strategy of control, the turbine generates a higher moment coefficient due to the increase in the peaks of lift force caused by a better difference in the pressure between the two sides of the blade due to the flexure motion. The turbine power coefficient can reach 38 % enhancement for the optimal flow control conditions.

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