Energy crisis and high emission of fossil fuels are major driving forces for developing renewable energy based technologies. In order to meet growing demand for energy, hydropower can be one of the sustainable alternatives. Further, the hydrokinetic turbine is considered as one of the most emerging technologies which harness energy from flowing water. In this paper, an attempt has been made to review hydrokinetic energy theory for energy conversion system from water currents analogous to wind power system. The most widespread classes of hydrokinetic turbines are discussed in detail with respect to their benefits, drawbacks and desirable conditions for applications. It has been found that in spite of some prevailing downsides of vertical axis turbine like of self-starting and lower efficiency, vertical axis turbines are appealing for many riverine applications. One of the prominent turbines of its kind is the Savonius hydrokinetic turbine that has the capacity to self-start at a very low fluid velocity in the river, canal etc. However, Savonius type hydrokinetic turbine inherently has poor efficiency. A number of experimental and numerical studies with a large number of physical designs and parameters have been carried out in the area of Savonius rotor to enhance its efficiency. Under this study, review of different parameters affecting the performance of Savonius hydrokinetic turbine has been carried out and presented in this paper which may be useful for future studies to improve the efficiency of such turbines.

Performance parameters of Savonius type hydrokinetic turbine – A Review

Aerodynamic design and economical evaluation of site specific small vertical axis wind turbines

The Savonius rotor is a drag-based vertical axis wind turbine and is used as an alternative source in small-scale energy generation. Design simplicity, low-cost, easy installation, good starting ab...

Review of experimental investigations into the design, performance and optimization of the Savonius rotor

Unsteady analysis on the instantaneous forces and moment arms acting on a novel Savonius-style wind turbine

The performance of the fuzzy controllers depends highly on the proper selection of some design parameters which is usually tuned iteratively via a trial and error process based primarily on engineering intuition. With the recent developments in the area of global optimization, it has been made possible to obtain the optimal values of the design parameters systematically. Nevertheless, it is well known that unless a priori knowledge is available about the optimization search-domain, most of the available time-domain objective functions may result in undesirable solutions. It is consequently important to provide guidelines on how these parameters affect the closed-loop behavior. As a result, some alternative objective functions are presented for the time-domain optimization of the fuzzy controllers, and the design parameters of a PID-type fuzzy controller are tuned by using the proposed time-domain objective functions. Finally, the real-time application of the optimal PID-type fuzzy controller is investigated on the robust stabilization of a laboratory active magnetic bearing system. The experimental results show that the designed PID-type fuzzy controllers provide much superior performances than the linear on-board controllers while retaining lower profiles of control signals.

Optimal PID-type fuzzy logic controller for a multi-input multi-output active magnetic bearing system

A novel magnetic levitated bearing system for Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT)

This paper presents the experimental results of the vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT), especially the Savonius rotors, which are developed for application on top of buildings due to lower wind speed compared with remote areas. The VAWT is regarded as the most suitable elegant candidate to be integrated with buildings for its relatively low operating noise, easy maintenance, and easy access. This study explored the interaction effect of the overlap ratio, phase-shift, and stage on the performance of the Savonius rotors in details. The results show that appropriate choice of the phase-shift angle according to the overlap ratio can not only increase the power coefficient of the Savonius rotors but also eliminate the negative static torque and smooth the variation of the static torque coefficient. Moreover, the performance of the two-stage rotors indicates that the two-stage rotor is the best candidate for this type of wind turbines or as a starting assistant for the Darrieus rotors.

Chen Jian

Papers

A novel magnetic levitated bearing system for Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT)

Influence of Phase-Shift and Overlap Ratio on Savonius Wind Turbine’s Performance