Incidence angle effect on the turbulent flow around a savonius wind rotor

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of the incidence angle on the aerodynamic characteristics of the flow around a Savonius wind rotor. Six configurations with different incidence angles equal to θ=0°, θ=30°, θ=60°, θ=90°, θ=120° and θ=150° were studied. For this, we have developed a numerical simulation using the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code Fluent. The considered numerical model is based on the resolution of the Navier-Stokes equations in conjunction with the k-ε turbulence model. These equations are solved by a finite volume discretization method. Particularly, we are interested in visualizing the velocity field, the mean velocity, the static pressure, the dynamic pressure, the turbulent kinetic energy, the dissipation rate of the turbulent kinetic energy and the turbulent viscosity. Results confirm that the variation of the incidence angle has an effect on the local characteristics. Our numerical results were compared with those obtained by anterior results. The comparison shows a good agreement and confirms the numerical method.