Abstract: This study numerically analyses the unsteady flow around the Darrieus-type turbine by using FLUENT and deals with the application to the design of blades.
Two kinds of blade sections are used in this study. Unsteady RANS equation and the turbulence model, either k-? or k-? model, appropriate for each blade section were employed. First for the NACA634-021 that the experimental data is available, the 2- and 3-dimensional numerical analyses have been performed and compared with the experimental result. For the optimization of the turbine, the parametric study has been performed to check the performance in accordance with the changes in the number of blades, solidity and camber.
It was demonstrated that the present approach could draw the turbine characteristics better in performance than the existing turbine. Next for the NACA653-018 blade with the high lift-drag ratio from the purpose of developing highly efficient turbine, this study has also tried to get the highly efficient turbine specifications by analyzing the performance while using 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional numerical analyses and the result was verified through the experiment.
According to the present study, it was concluded that the 3-dimensional numerical analysis has simulated the experimental values relatively well and also, the 2-dimensional analysis can be a useful tool in the parametric study for the turbine design.
