Effect of airfoil shape on power performance of vertical axis wind turbines in dynamic stall: Symmetric Airfoils

The current design of vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) suffers from inevitable change in tip speed ratio, λ, in variant wind conditions due to fixed rotor speed. At relatively high wind speeds, which are promising due to high wind power potential, VAWTs operate at low λ with poor power coefficient. Morphing airfoils can be a potential solution by modifying the airfoil shape to optimal at each λ. The optimal airfoil shape for VAWTs at low λ, where dynamic stall is present, has not yet been studied in the literature, therefore, the present study addresses this gap by focusing on this regime to serve as a step towards designing morphing airfoils for VAWTs by identifying the optimal airfoil shape at low λ. The present study performs a combined analysis of three shape defining parameters, namely the airfoil maximum thickness and its position as well as the leading-edge radius, to reveal the overall design space. The analysis is based on 252 high-fidelity transient CFD simulations of 126 identical airfoil shapes. The simulations are verified and validated with three experiments. The results show that the three shape defining parameters have a fully coupled impact on the turbine power and thrust coefficients. When λ reduces from 3.0 to 2.5, the optimal airfoil changes from NACA0018–4.5/2.75 to NACA0024–4.5/3.5, that is increasing the maximum thickness from 18%c to 24%c and shifting its position from 27.5%c to 35%c, while the leading-edge radius index, I, remains 4.5. In general, reducing I from the default value of 6.0 to 4.5 is found to increase the turbine CP.