CFD Analysis of A 3-Bladed NACA 0018 Vertical Axis Wind Turbine for Deployment in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract
During the last few years, vertical axis wind tubines have evolved as a suitable supplement to energy production worldwide. There has been a lot of interest in vertical axis wind turbines as a small-scale renewable power converter because they can be used in places where the wind speeds are turbulent or unsteady. When investigating the aerodynamic characteristics of vertical axis wind turbines, computational fluid dynamics has been shown to be one of the most effective methods. There is a need for better knowledge of the factors that influence the accuracy of computational fluid dynamics. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of these factors on the simulation of a low-speed turbine to guide the execution of accurate computational fluid dynamics simulations of vertical axis wind turbines at varying tip speed ratios and solidities. To simulate the turbulent, unstable fluid flow around the turbine, we used a 2D SIMPLE approach with the help of ANSYS FLUENT. In the study, it was found that when the tip speed ratio is low, the result is largely dependent on the azimuthal increment, and a fine azimuthal increment of 0.1 is usually better for low tip speed ratios
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