Darrieus wind turbines are experiencing a renewed interest in the wind energy scenario, in particular, whenever small and medium-size installations are considered. In these contexts, the average wind speeds are generally quite low due to scale effects and therefore the most exploited design choices for the turbines are the H-shape configuration, as the entire blade can take advantage of the maximum rotational radius, and high chord to radius ratios, in order to ensure suitable Reynolds numbers on the airfoils. By doing so, the aerodynamic effects induced by the motion of the airfoils in a curved flowpath become more evident and the airfoils themselves have to be designed to compensate these phenomena if conventional design tools based on the blade element momentum (BEM) theory are used. In this study, fully unsteady 2D simulations were exploited to analyze a three-bladed H-Darrieus wind turbine in order to define the real flow structure and its effects on the turbine performance; in detail, the influence of both the virtual camber and the virtual incidence were investigated. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results were supported by experimental data collected on full-scale models reproducing two different airfoil mountings. Finally, the proper design criteria to compensate these phenomena are proposed and their benefits on a conventional simulation with a BEM approach are discussed.

Interest in vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) is experiencing a renaissance after most major research projects came to a standstill in the mid 1990s, in favor of conventional horizontal-axis turbines (HAWTs). Nowadays, the inherent advantages of the VAWT concept, especially in the Darrieus configuration, may outweigh their disadvantages in specific applications, like the urban context or floating platforms. To enable these concepts further, efficient, accurate, and robust aerodynamic prediction tools and design guidelines are needed for VAWTs, for which low-order simulation methods have not reached yet a maturity comparable to that of the blade element momentum theory for HAWTs' applications. The two computationally efficient methods that are presently capable of capturing the unsteady aerodynamics of Darrieus turbines are the double multiple streamtubes (DMS) theory, based on momentum balances, and the lifting line theory (LLT) coupled to a free vortex wake model. Both methods make use of tabulated lift and drag coefficients to compute the blade forces. Since the incidence angles range experienced by a VAWT blade is much wider than that of a HAWT blade, the accuracy of polars in describing the stall region and the transition toward the “thin plate like” behavior has a large effect on simulation results. This paper will demonstrate the importance of stall and poststall data handling in the performance estimation of Darrieus VAWTs. Using validated CFD simulations as a baseline, comparisons are provided for a blade in VAWT-like motion based on a DMS and a LLT code employing three sets of poststall data obtained from a wind tunnel campaign, XFoil predictions extrapolated with the Viterna–Corrigan model and a combination of them. The polar extrapolation influence on quasi-steady operating conditions is shown and azimuthal variations of thrust and torque are compared for exemplary tip-speed ratios (TSRs). In addition, the major relevance of a proper dynamic stall model into both the simulation methods is highlighted and discussed.

A better comprehension of the aerodynamic behavior of rotating airfoils in Darrieus vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) is crucial both for the further development of these machines and for improvement of conventional design tools based on zero- or one-dimensional models (e.g., blade element momentum (BEM) models). When smaller rotors are designed with high chord-to-radius (c/R) ratios so as not to limit the blade Reynolds number, the performance of turbine blades has been suggested to be heavily impacted by a virtual camber effect imparted on the blades by the curvilinear flow they experience. To assess the impact of this virtual camber effect on blade and turbine performance, a standard NACA 0018 airfoil and a NACA 0018 conformally transformed such that the airfoil's chord line follows the arc of a circle, where the ratio of the airfoil's chord to the circle's radius is 0.25 were considered. For both airfoils, wind tunnel tests were carried out to assess their aerodynamic lift and drag coefficients for Reynolds numbers of interest for Darrieus VAWTs. Unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations have been then carried out to obtain curvilinear flow performance data for the same airfoils mounted on a Darrieus rotor with a c/R of 0.25. The blade incidence and lift and drag forces were extracted from the CFD output using a novel incidence angle deduction technique. According to virtual camber theory, the transformed airfoil in this curvilinear flow should be equivalent to the NACA 0018 in rectilinear flow, while the NACA0018 should be equivalent to the inverted transformed airfoil in rectilinear flow. Comparisons were made between these airfoil pairings using the CFD output and the rectilinear performance data obtained from the wind tunnel tests and xfoil output in the form of pressure distributions and lift and drag polars. Blade torque coefficients and turbine power coefficient are also presented for the CFD VAWT using both blade profiles.