Wind tunnel tests of a two-bladed Savonius wind rotor with novel parabolic blades

Abstract

The study presents an experimental research on a vertical-axis Savonius wind rotor featuring optimized parabolic blades. This parabolic blade is developed by optimizing its sectional cut-angle through a series of numerical simulation. The parabolic-bladed Savonius rotor of various aspect ratios is tested in a low-speed wind tunnel to evaluate its power coefficient ( CP) along with its self-starting capability. For a direct comparison, the tests are also conducted for a rotor with the semicircular blades. The wind tunnel tests demonstrate the peak CP of the parabolic and conventional semicircular bladed rotors to be 0.165 and 0.138, respectively at a tip-speed ratio of 0.67 and an aspect ratio of 0.9. The wind rotor with the parabolic blades shows an improvement of CP by 19.56% against its conventional semicircular counterpart. With the inclusion of blockage correction, the test rotors with parabolic and semicircular blades show the CP of 0.161 and 0.134, respectively.