An experimental investigation of various impacts on the performance of a small-scale upwind HAWT

Abstract EN

The power production by wind turbines usually falls below the theoretical maximum power coefficient of the Betz limit of 59.26%.

This is mainly related to the unsteady aerodynamic environment and poor wind turbine design systems.

In this paper, an experimental study is carried out on a small-scale upwind horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) to discuss the aspects of better design systems and to investigate the influence of the rotor blades number, and the variation in the wind speed and its direction on the wind turbine performance.

To achieve this aim, three different rotors of the same size with 2, 3, and 4 blades have been fabricated and tested experimentally to evaluate the optimum blades number at various unsteady operating conditions.

In this study, it is found that the power extraction of the wind turbine increases by increasing the blades number of the rotor and the wind speed, while it decreases by increasing the yaw angle.

Indeed, it is also shown that a good wind turbine design can even exceed the maximum power coefficient of the Betz limit (16/27).

The present work can be considered as an important step for understanding various impacts on the performance of wind turbines, which could help to select/deign better wind turbine design systems.