Effect of barchan dune guide blades on the performance of a lotus-shaped micro-wind turbine

A lotus-shaped micro-wind turbine has been developed as a decoration for urban and rural areas. This wind rotor consists of guide and semi-circular blades. In this study, barchan dune was used as a model to design the guide blades of the wind turbine. The effects of different skew angles of the barchan dune guide blade on the performance of the wind rotor were studied using computational fluid dynamic simulation methods. The performance of each section of the semi-circular blades was also analyzed. Findings suggest that power coefficients for 15°, 20°, or 25° slope of the rotor are roughly identical at the same tip speed ratio, and their values are relatively larger than those of the other rotors without guide blades or with 0° or 30° slope. Furthermore, their maximum values are approximately 120% of the rotor with null slope or without guide blades. The performance of the wind rotor is minimally dependent on the skew angle of the barchan dune guide blade within the range of α=15–25°.

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