Indo-Danish International Conference on

Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)

22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

DESIGN OF ROTOR BLADE FOR VERTICAL AXIS WIND

TURBINE USING DOUBLE AEROFOIL

Prasad D. Chougule*, Nicolas Ratkovich, Poul H. Kirkegaard, Søren.R.K.Nielsen

Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University.
Sohngardsholmsvej 57, 9000, Aalborg, Denmark
*pdc@civil.aau.dk, Ph.No. +45 9940 8583.

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, small vertical axis wind turbines are receiving more attention compared to horizontal wind turbines due to
their suitability in urban use because they generate less noise, have bird free turbines and lower cost. There is few
vertical axis wind turbines design with good power curve. However, the efficiency of power extraction has not been
improved. Therefore, an attempt has been made to utilize high lift technology in practice for vertical axis wind turbines
in order to improve power efficiency. High lift is obtained by double aerofoil elements mainly used in aeroplane wing
design. In this current work two aerofoils are used to design a rotor blade for a vertical axis wind turbine to improve the
power efficiency on the rotor. Double aerofoil blade design consists of a main aerofoil and a slat aerofoil. The parameters
related to position and orientation of the slat aerofoil with respect to the main aerofoil defines the high lift. Orientation of
slat aerofoil is a parameter of investigation in this paper. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have been used to obtain
the aerodynamic characteristics of double aerofoil. The CFD simulations were carried out using Star CCM+ v7.04 (CD-
adapco, UK) software. Aerofoils used in this work are selected from standard aerofoil shapes.

Key Words: Vertical axis wind turbine, Blade design, Multiple element aerofoil, Computational fluid dynamics.

1. Introduction

Due to the large demand on urban electricity, the continuous supply of electricity has severely affected towns and
villages all over the world. Renewable energy devices are getting more and more popular in developing countries (i.e.
India and Brazil). However, the energy supply falls short in meeting the rapidly increasing electricity demand. There are
fewer developments in and high cost solutions to off grid devices which can provide electricity to urban and rural house
hold. In such situation, there is a need for a technology that can provide an alternative source of electricity to an
individual house hold at affordable prices. For this reason, low cost and high power efficient technologies need to be
developed. One option is wind energy devices, which have low cost compared to solar panels for electricity production.
Nevertheless, there are very few wind turbines (WT) that can be placed on building rooftops and the power efficiency
still be low [1]. There are two categories of WT: (i) Horizontal axis (HA) and (ii) vertical axis (VA). Since, it is more
advantageous to use VAWT for urban application [2] [3], the development of a new design of VAWT is the main
objective of this work.

VAWTs are known to be less efficient than HAWTs [4], and for this particular reason, research and development on this
type of WT have been put aside. An aerodynamic shape of blade improves the overall efficiency of WT. Generally,
single aerofoil shape is used to design a WT blade; it may be straight, spiral or curved geometry [5]. An attempt has been
made in this work to design a blade by using two standard aerofoil shapes, also known as multiple element aerofoil,
which is commonly used in the aviation industry [6]. Although multiple element aerofoil technology is well known, it

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 Indo-Danish International Conference on
Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)
22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

has not been implemented in WT design yet. In this work, blade design consists of a main aerofoil and a slat aerofoil
called a double aerofoil. A numerical simulation of flow over double aerofoil is performed using Star CCM+ v7.04 (CD-
adapco, UK) software. It is learned from simulation that double aerofoil blade design has a higher lift coefficient than the
single aerofoil blade design. Since WT power is directly proportional to the lift coefficient, there is scope for improving
power efficiency of traditional VAWT design which will be investigated in future research work.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1 Design of Double Aerofoil

Double aerofoil blade design is constructed by a main and a slat aerofoil as shown in Figure 1. The working principle of
double aerofoil is based on multiple element aerofoil technology and is explained in detail in [6]. In designing double
aerofoil, the position of the slat aerofoil is important due its effect of delaying the stall angle of aerofoil to develop high
lift. Therefore, the position of trailing edge TE of slat aerofoil and orientation of slat aerofoil are very important design
parameters. The position and orientation of a slat aerofoil with respect to the main aerofoil is expressed by three
parameters. The first two parameters describes the position of the TE of the slat aerofoil along the local -direction ( )
and along local -direction ( ), respectively. The third parameter is the slat angle ( ), which represents the orientation
of a slat aerofoil and is the angle between the chord length of a slat aerofoil ( ) and the local -direction and is positive
in nose up direction. These three parameters are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Double Aerofoil

In [7], it was found that locating the TE of slat aerofoil at 15% of chord length of main aerofoil ( ) was an overall good
position. In addition, the effective normal distance between the main and the slat aerofoil was less; however, a normal
distance of less than 5% of was better. Therefore, in double aerofoil blade design, the position and orientation of the
slat aerofoil with respect to the main aerofoil were chosen as per findings in [7] irrespective of the aerofoil shape and
size. However the aerofoils used in [7] and in this work are different. The parameters can be found in Table 1. The
arrangement of double aerofoil used to design blades is shown in Figure 1. It should be noted that the parameters are
slightly modified (reduced) to keep the minimum possible normal distance between TE of slat aerofoil and surface of
main aerofoil. In general, NACA symmetric aerofoils are used in the design of conventional VAWT blades such as
NACA0012, NACA0018, etc. However, in the current work, an aerofoil designed at TU Delft is used, named
DU06W200, cf. [8] for more details. The reason for choosing this aerofoil is that is suitable for low speed ratio and has
improved power coefficient compared to other symmetric aerofoils from the NACA series.

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 Indo-Danish International Conference on
Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)
22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

Table 1: Parameters of Double Aerofoil

Description Parameter Value Unit
Chord length of main aerofoil 200 mm
Chord length of slat aerofoil 100 mm

Distance of TE of slat aerofoil from nose of main aerofoil in x-direction 23.23 mm

Distance of TE of slat aerofoil from nose of main aerofoil in y-direction 22.85 mm

Slat angle -16 degrees ( )

To determine if is important to consider the turbulence around the aerofoils, the Reynolds number (Eq. (1)) can be used.

(1)
-3 -5
where is the air density (1.23 kgm at 27C), is the air viscosity (1.8110 Pas at 27C) and is the free-stream
-1 5
velocity (11.2 ms ). Resolving Eq. (1), the Reynolds number is around 1.510 which is fully turbulent ( ).

2.2 Computational Fluid Dynamics

2.2.1 Grid
In this study, a 2D geometry was built in Star CCM+ v7.04 (CD-adapco, UK). The domain has a radius of 2 m, which
corresponds to 20 times the chord length on the main aerofoil ( ) (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Geometry of domain

A prism layer composed of 20 layers close to the aerofoil walls was used to properly capture the boundary layer between
the wall and the wind with a thickness of 1.5 mm. The first grid was fixed to a distance of 110-6 m to ensure a y+ less
than 1, in order to properly resolve the boundary layer close to the wall surface and obtain accurate reports of the drag
and lift coefficient (Figure 3). The polyhedral mesh was used as different angles of attack ( ) were simulated given more
flexibility on the mesh generation and increasing the convergence in the solution. The cell count was ~350.000.

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 Indo-Danish International Conference on
Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)
22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

Figure 3: Domain grid and boundary layer

2.2.2 Model
In this study, isothermal and compressible (ideal) gas have been considered. A single set of momentum equations is
solved. The continuity equation (Eq. (2)) ensures the mass balance in the system [8].

( )
(2)

The momentum equation (Eq. (3)) considers the forces acting on the system.

( ) ( ) [ ( )] ( ) (3)

where is the component of the fluid velocity, is the spatial coordinate, is the static pressure, is the
effective viscosity, is the Kronecker delta and ̅̅̅̅̅̅ is the Reynolds stresses. In order to simulate turbulence,
the Shear Stress Transport (SST) k- model was used [8]. The reason for that is that it absorbs both the property of good
accuracy in the near-wall region of standard k- model (low-Reynolds-number effects, compressibility and shear flow
spreading) and nice precision in the far field region of k- model (high Reynolds number turbulent flow). It is more
accurate and reliable for a wider class flow than the standard k- model. On top of that, this model was chosen because it
is computationally efficient and it has been used to correctly simulate aerofoil [9]. The model is described by the elliptic
equations presented in Eqs. (4) and (5) which required a closure for the Reynolds Average Navier-Stokes (RANS)
equations.

( ) ( )
[( ) ] (4)

( ) ( )
[( ) ] ( ) (5)

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 Indo-Danish International Conference on
Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)
22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

where is the turbulent kinetic energy, is the specific dissipation rate. The closure coefficients and auxilary relations
can be found elsewhere [9]. In order to solve the system of governing partial differential equations, discretization of the
Eqs. (2) to (5) was made using a Finite Volume Method with an algebraic segregated solver as implemented in Star-
CCM+. The continuity and momentum equations need to be linked, which is attained by the SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit
Method for Pressure-Linked Equations) algorithm. In addition, the iterative solver was sped up due to an Algebraic
Multigrid (AMG) technique that yields better convergence rate. All simulations in this work are performed under steady-
state conditions. Under relaxation, factors of 0.3, 0.7 and 0.8 respectively were applied on pressure, momentum and k-
turbulence energy parameters. The residuals were set to 10 -4 to ensure a converged solution.

2.2.3 Boundary and Operational Conditions

At the aerofoil walls, the conditions were assumed to be no-slip boundary and the wall function approach is used (Figure
4). The no-slip condition is the appropriate condition for the velocity component at the wall since the fluid in contact
with the wall is stationary. At domain boundary, the free-stream condition was applied, where the free-stream velocity
was set and the angle of attack was changed between -20 and 20.

Figure 4: boundary conditions

3 Results and Discussion

Multiple simulations are performed for different angles of attack keeping the same conditions as described in section 2.
Figure 5 shows the velocity contour plots and the respective streamlines over double aerofoil for different angle of
attack. The CFD simulations are also performed for single aerofoil and aerodynamic characteristics are obtained for
various angles of attack; however the velocity contour plots are not shown for single aerofoils in this paper.

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 Indo-Danish International Conference on
Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)
22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

Figure 5. Velocity scalar (a) , (b) (c) and (d)

Figure 5a shows velocity flow at angle of attack where stagnation points start appearing. In Figure 5b, the flow
is fully attached and has a high velocity, which passes over the main aerofoil creating smooth flow over double aerofoil.
Further flow is slightly separated at which can been seen in Figure 5c. At this angle effect of slat aerofoil to
dump flow at high velocity on the main aerofoil is reduced. In Figure 5d, it is observed that the flow is separated at the
main aerofoil and stall occurs.

For VAWT operating at low tip speed ratio, the angle of attack varies in the range of to [10]. In order to
obtain high lift from double aerofoil, a stall region should be avoided. It is found in this study that the stall region occurs
at angle of attack in positive side for double aerofoil which occurs at for single aerofoil. Therefore, the
aerodynamic properties lift and drag coefficient of double aerofoil are obtained for range from to . Figure 6
shows the CFD simulations of lift and drag versus angle of attack plot.

The black solid line with star a mark corresponds to the lift and drag curve for the main aerofoil when used alone in the
construction of a single aerofoil blade design. The blue solid line with stars represents the lift and drag curve for the main
aerofoil when used in a double aerofoil blade design. The red solid line with stars represents the lift and drag curves for
the slat aerofoil when used in a double aerofoil blade design. There is a significant increase in lift coefficient from 1.337
to 4.401 at from aerodynamic characteristics of double aerofoil. In other words, the lift coefficient of the main
and slat aerofoil together is increased by 230% compared with the lift coefficient of the main aerofoil at when
used alone. The higher lift is caused by the slat aerofoil in front of the main aerofoil, and the lift coefficient of the main
aerofoil did not changed much. In the future, the simulation results will be further validated by a wind tunnel experiment.

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 Indo-Danish International Conference on
Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)
22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

Figure 6: CFD simulations for (a) Lift and (b) Drag Coefficient for Double Aerofoil and Main Aerofoil

4 Conclusion

A CFD simulation of selected single aerofoil and designed double aerofoil is performed in this work. Use of double
aerofoil in VAWT rotor blade design is proposed. It is observed that there is increase in the lift coefficient of the slat
aerofoil by two to three times. It is also found that there is not much change in aerodynamic characteristics of the main
aerofoil in the double aerofoil design. The slat aerofoil carries higher aerodynamic loads in a double aerofoil blade
design. The lift coefficient is directly proportional to the power efficiency, and it is planned to determine power
efficiency of VAWT by using double aerofoil in future work.

5 Acknowledgment

This research is carried out under the EU FP7 ITN project SYSWIND (Grant No. PITN-GA- 2009-238325). The
SYSWIND project is funded by the Marie Curie Actions under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and
Technological Development of the EU. The authors are grateful for the support.

6 References

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concepts for wind power, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 12, 1419-1434, (2008).

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 Indo-Danish International Conference on
Wind Energy: Materials, Engineering, and Policies (WEMEP 2012)
22nd November – 23rd November, 2012
Hyderabad, India

[2] Sharpe T., Proven G., Cross flex: Concept and early development of a true building integrated wind turbine, Energy
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[3] Muller G., Jentsch M.F., Stoddart E., Vertical axis resistance type wind turbines for use in buildings, Renewable
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[5] Eriksson S., Bernhoff B., Leijon H., Evaluation of different turbine concepts for wind power, Renewable and
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[6] Smith A.M.O., High lift aerodynamics, Journal of Aircraft, Vol. 12, N0. 6, (1975).

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[8] Claessens M.C., The design and testing of aerofoils for application in small vertical axis wind turbines, A Master
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