A Method to Design an Efficient Airfoil for Small Wind Turbines in Low Wind Speed Conditions Using XFLR5 and CFD Simulations

Small wind turbines operating in low wind speed regions have not had any significant success. In addition, small wind speed regions occupy a large area of the world, so they represent a potential area for installing small wind turbines in the future. In this paper, a method to design an efficient airfoil for small wind turbines in low wind speed conditions using XFLR5 and CFD simulations is implemented. Because the impact of the airflow on the blade surface under low Re number conditions can change suddenly for small geometries, designing the airfoil shape to optimize the aerodynamic performance is essential. The tuning of the key geometric parameters using inversion techniques for better aerodynamic performance is presented in this study. A two-dimensional model was used to consider the airflow on the airfoil surface with differences in the angle of attack. The original S1010 airfoil was used to design a new airfoil for increasing the aerodynamic efficiency by using V6.57 XFLR5 software. Subsequently, the new VAST-EPU-S1010 airfoil model was adjusted to the maximum thickness and the maximum thickness position. It was simulated in low wind speed conditions of 4–6 m/s by a computational fluid dynamics simulation. The lift coefficient, drag coefficient, and CL/CD coefficient ratio were evaluated under the effect of the angle of attack and the maximum thickness by using the k-ε model. The simulation results show that the VAST-EPU-S1010 airfoil achieved the greatest aerodynamic efficiency at an angle of attack of 3°, a maximum thickness of 8%, and a maximum thickness position of 20.32%. The maximum value of CL/CD of the new airfoil at 6 m/s was higher than at 4 m/s by about 6.25%.