Effect of solidity on the performance of micro-scale darrieus wind turbines: An Experimental Study

摘要

Recently micro scale wind turbines have received special attention in particular in urban industry. One of the influential parameters of these turbines is the rotor solidity coefficient. In this research, the effect of solidity change, defined based on the chord length of the blade, on the performance of micro darrieus vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) with straight blades is experimentally studied. For this purpose, three different rotors with different solidities are designed and constructed. The power output of the turbines is measured with respect to different tip speed ratios (TSR). The reults show that the best performance of the turbines occur at the solidity value which is higher compared to the values presented by previous investigations as the optimum one.