Studies of some high solidity symmetrical and unsymmetrical blade H-Darrieus rotors with respect to starting characteristics, dynamic performances and flow physics in low wind streams

• High solidity unsymmetrical blade H-Darrieus rotors are investigated in low wind stream.
• Such H-Darrieus rotors are investigated for applications other than power generation.
• Static and dynamic performances of such rotors are evaluated.
• Effects of non-uniform flow and steady turbulence are investigated on the rotor performance.
• Optimum aspect ratio of such rotor was found out for the rotor highest dynamic performances.

Vertical axis wind turbines can be successfully installed in low wind speed conditions but its detailed starting characteristics in terms of starting torque, starting time and dynamic performances have not been investigated thoroughly which is important for increasing the energy yield of such turbines. Amongst their designs, H-Darrieus rotor, in spite of having good power coefficient, possesses poor self-starting features as symmetrical blade profiles are used most of the times. Instead of using symmetrical blades if unsymmetrical or cambered blades are used with high solidity, then starting performance of H-Darrieus rotor along with its power coefficients can be improved. Though this performance improvement measures are correlated with improvement in the starting characteristics, a detailed work in this direction would be useful and for this reason the present work has been carried out. Three types of blade designs have been considered; two unsymmetrical blades namely S815 and EN0005 and one conventional symmetrical NACA 0018 blade, and experiments are conducted using a centrifugal blower test rig for three-bladed H-Darrieus rotors using these three considered blades at low wind streams (4 m/s, 6 m/s and 8 m/s). Considering reality, the effects of flow non-uniformity and turbulence intensity on the rotor performance at optimum condition as well as flow physics have also been studied. It has been found that unsymmetrical S815 blade rotor has higher dynamic torque and higher power coefficient than unsymmetrical EN0005 and symmetrical NACA 0018 blade H-Darrieus rotors.