Turbulence Modeling Comparative Analysis For Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

Document Type : Research articles

Authors

1 Mechanical Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering-MTI University, Cairo, Egypt

2 Mechanical Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering at Shoubra-Benha University, Cairo, Egypt

3 Mechanical Power Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering-Cairo University, Giza, Egypt

Abstract

The impact of turbulence model selection on the accuracy of CFD simulations of VAWTs is highly considered. In this paper 2D CFD simulations were carried out on a three-bladed H-Darrieus VAWT with NACA 0021 airfoil. Two turbulence models, two equations k-ε Realizable and four equations Transition-SST, were selected to validate the power coefficient calculated from simulations with numerical and experimental data from the literature. The power coefficient calculated from the simulations performed by the k-ε Realizable turbulence model was slightly underestimated, while Transition-SST turbulence model results were slightly overestimated. However, in terms of root mean square error of the power coefficient calculated from the simulations performed by the k-ε Realizable turbulence model gives a value of 0.0503, while the Transition-SST model gives a value of 0.0655. Moreover, in terms of mean average percentage error of the power coefficient calculated from the simulations performed by the k-ε Realizable turbulence model gives a value of 35.15%, while the Transition-SST model gives a value of 42.34%. Another validation with a two straight bladed numerical model with NACA 0018 airfoil was performed using 2D CFD simulations. Two equations k-ε Realizable, two equations kω SST and four equations Transition-SST were selected to conduct these simulations, the results showed that the k-ε Realizable turbulence model was the best candidate among the other ones.

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