Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Wind Turbine for Different Tilt Angles

Energy consumption and environmental degradation due to conventional fuel consumption is important criteria for researchers in the world. The solar and wind energy are abundantly available which can be used day and night time in different part of the earth. The attention is made on wind power production in rural and urban areas along with wind farms. It is found that multi rotor wind plants are superior over single rotor. In the current study, attention is focused on small wind power plants for different tilt angles. CFD simulations are carried out on NACA 5510 airfoil blade to test rotational speed performance of horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) with wind velocity varying from 3 m/s to 7 m/s for tilt angles from 00 to 180. It is found that for wind velocity of 3 m/s, blade velocity is 16.52 m/s at root tip. It is observed that pressure and velocity values are reduced at 180 tilt angles as compared to 00 while aerodynamic performance is optimum at blade tilt angle of 40. The path lines and velocity contours are studied for different tilt angles with wind velocity. The power obtained from CFD analysis is validated with theoretical values using Burton's theory. It is investigated that all the results obtained for torque and power generated along the length of blade are within ± 5% for theoretical and CFD.These results are very useful for further design of wind turbine blades.