Design and Analysis of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Blade

Abstract

Wind is used from a very long time as a source of electricity. Lots of efforts have been made to develop the horizontal axis wind turbines but vertical axis wind turbines did not get much attention over the past couple of decades. In the current era of energy crisis it has acquired more significance. Blade is the most important component of a wind turbine which controls a wind turbine 's performance and the design of other components that are attached to it. Current work introduces a concept for the design of a twisted unsymmetrical blade for a small-scale vertical axis wind turbine with beam theories for analytical modeling and a commercial program MSC NASTRAN, PATRAN for numerical modeling. The design parameters of the blade such as solidity, aspect ratio, pressure coefficient etc. are calculated with the goal of the 1 kW power output and the blade design was tested under extreme wind conditions where maximum deflection and bending stress values were calculated at peak aerodynamic and centrifugal forces values. Mainly the design considered achieving the structural strength i.e. reduction of deflections and bending stresses. This blade design has high strength and lower material consumption to achieve the low cost of complete wind turbine rotor assembly which actually covers over 50 percent of total wind turbine costs.