Flat Terrain Performance Rating Analysis of a Novel Airborne Rotor-Type Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) by Applying Three-Dimensional Rotating Mesh Unsteady RANS Simulation Method

Abstract

This paper presents the extended study on the performance analysis of a proposed airborne rotor type wind turbine design in flat terrain wind conditions. The innovative design proposal by the inventor was presented in our earlier work. The proposal is based on the airborne structure rotation with blades attached to the airborne zeppelin, thus called an airborne rotor generator. In our previous work, we developed a solid model of the airborne rotor and obtained the power generation potential for 12 m/s standard wind velocity. In this study, we present the extended work and results obtained by applying a Rotating Mesh Method developed in ANSYS/FLUENT at average wind speed conditions of 6, 9 and 12 m/s with rotation velocities of 0.8,1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 rad/s. 12m/s results indicate that the expected power generation potential for the rotor is around 80 kW on average at a rotation speed of 1.4 rad/s. Preliminary results indicate that the airborne zeppelin with sail-type blades may produce powers of around 40 kW at around 300 m altitude.