Performance Study of Twisted Darrieus Hydrokinetic Turbine With Novel Blade Design

Abstract

Twisted Darrieus water turbine is receiving growing attention for small-scale hydropower generation. Accordingly, the need for raised water energy conversion incentivizes researchers to focus on the blade shape optimization of twisted Darrieus turbine. In view of this, experimental analysis has been performed to appraise the efficiency of a spiral Darrieus water rotor in the present work. To better the performance parameters of the studied water rotor with twisted blades, three novel blade shapes, namely U-shaped blade, V-shaped blade, and W-shaped blade, have been numerically tested using a computational fluid dynamics three-dimensional numerical model. The maximum power coefficient of the Darrieus rotor reaches 0.17 at a 0.63 tip-speed ratio using twisted blades. Using V-shaped blades, the maximum power coefficient has risen to 0.185. The current study could be practically applied to provide more effective employment of twisted Darrieus turbines and to improve the generated power from flowing water such as river streams, tidal currents, or other man-made water canals.