An aerodynamic analysis of a novel small wind turbine based on impulse turbine principles

This document is the Accepted Manuscript of the following article: Pei Ying, Yong Kang Chen, and Yi Geng Xu, ‘An aerodynamic analysis of a novel small wind turbine based on impulse turbine principles’, Renewable Energy, Vol. 75: 37-43, March 2015, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2014.09.035, made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/The paper presents both a numerical and an experimental approach to study the air flow characteristics of a novel small wind turbine and to predict its performance. The turbine model was generated based on impulse turbine principles in order to be employed in an omni-flow wind energy system in urban areas. The results have shown that the maximum flow velocity behind the stator can be increased by 20% because of a nozzle cascade from the stator geometry. It was also observed that a wind turbine with a 0.3 m rotor diameter achieved the maximum power coefficient of 0.17 at the tip speed ratio of 0.6 under the wind velocity of 8.2 m/s. It was also found that the power coefficient was linked to the hub-to-tip ratio and reached its maximum value when the hub-to-tip ratio was 0.45. It is evident that this new wind turbine has the potential for low working noise and good starting feature compared with a conventional horizontal axis wind turbine.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio