1. UKM Learning and Research Repository
2. PHD Thesis / Tesis PHD
3. Solar Energy Research Institute / Institut Penyelidikan Tenaga Suria (SERI)

Title:	Optimization design of small vertical axis wind turbine for low wind speed regions
Authors:	Saba Amaar Salih (P57157)
Supervisor:	Sohif Mat, Prof. Dr.
Keywords:	Alternative energy Wind turbines
Issue Date:	1-Sep-2018
Description:	Alternative energy has become very important in the last years due to the depletion of and high cost of fuel. Thus, free energy like solar and wind energies start to get high attention. This needs to improve wind energy conversion system which is transformed from small sized generation system to bigger sized system. The optimization of 300 Watt vertical axis wind turbine includes the ability of increasing the produced power of conventional vertical axis wind turbine at low wind speed condition. The main concept of modified vertical axis wind turbine is done by adding secondary blades attached to the main blades of the turbine at a certain location with specific distance. The secondary blades have exactly the same airfoil profile of the main blades with NACA 4412, in which they form a novel system that has higher rotational speed at the same wind velocity and hence has higher output power. The study of this project conducted on the improvement of overall performance of conventional three blades vertical axis wind turbine which has a rated output power of 300 Watt at 12 m/s wind velocity. While, the minimum extractable output power is only 30 Watt at 3 m/s wind velocity. This range of output power cannot be obtained at low wind speed regions. Therefore, the need for improving the design of vertical axis wind turbine to generate power at a wind speed lower than 5 m/s (i.e. 3 m/s) is discussed and proved in this thesis. The first analysis done to calculate the output power for the conventional vertical axis wind turbine at a range of wind velocity from 2 to 12 m/s, experimentally using wind tunnel testing. The second analysis is to find the possible modification that could be done to the conventional VAWT to reach that target of power. Different parameters were studied to investigate this improvement with a wide range of wind velocity starts from 2 m/s to 12 m/s. The most important parameter found to have the most influence effect on the performance of the wind turbine was blade wind velocity. Therefore, in order to increase the blade velocity during rotation process of wind turbine, a proposed scenario was presented. This scenario indicated that adding a secondary blade to the main blades of the turbine could generate additional forces that are parallel to the original forces generated by the main blades. These forces generate additional wind velocity which in fact parallel to the blade velocity of main blade. The scenarios presented in this thesis are: (Parallel, Overlap, Extension and Venturi) in different distances and arrangements between the two blades. The blade velocity is increased by 2.5% at 3 m/s wind velocity. This percentage will increase for the output power in which it is 27% at 3 m/s. When adding the secondary blades to the wind turbine main blades, the pressure distribution inside the rotational area will be symmetrically distributed. This leads to increase the swirling velocity between the rotating blades to generate additional vortices that enhance the rotational speed of the turbine. Tip speed ratio of the modified vertical axis wind turbine at 3 m/s wind velocity is found to be 0.755, while for conventional VAWT is 0.693. Therefore, the percentage of improvement in TSR is found to be 8.21 %.,Ph.D.
Pages:	174
Call Number:	TJ776.5.S235 2018 3 tesis
Publisher:	UKM, Bangi
Appears in Collections:	Solar Energy Research Institute / Institut Penyelidikan Tenaga Suria (SERI)

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