This article introduces a new wind turbine, called resistance type vertical axial wind turbine (VAWT) with soft blades. The blades of the new turbine resist the wind and collect the power along the wind direction, while canceled the resistance against the wind direction. The new work mechanism was conceived to improve the aerodynamic performances of traditional VAWT. To prove the above supposing, two wind turbine models with soft blades were set up to find the static torque coefficients by numerical study. The simulation results of both models were compared with the experiment data of Savonius wind turbines models with the same sweeping area. The simulation results showed that: 1) The comparison between experiment data and CFD analysis on the same Savonius wind turbine has the reliability; 2) The soft bladed VAWT produces no negative static torque and it starts normally under low wind speed condition.

Hong-Kai Hao

Papers

Numerical Study of Resistance Type Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Soft Blades