Numerical investigation of a generated vortex around a straight cambered blade profile NACA4312

Wind turbines are recently regarded as an alternative source of green energy. The challenge is to achieve the optimum design parameters and configurations, which provides the maximum power performance. Several researches have investigated the influence of the geometrical and operating turbine parameters. In this study, ANSYS FLUENT Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software is used to study the aerodynamic flow around turbine blades. The aim of this paper is to give a deep insight into complex flow fields, tip vortices generation and dynamic stalls around turbine blades. 3D model of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) with straight cambered blade profile NACA 4312 operating at moderate specific TSR is investigated. An unsteady turbulent fluid flow based on the RANS equations and shear stress transport formulations SST.k-ω were adopted. This study reveals a great correlation between the evolution of the torque coefficient and the blade vortices generation. It has been shown that the maximum tip vortices size is closely correlated to the moment coefficient peak. In addition, the positive sloped curve on the moment coefficient is caused by the growing trend of vortices size along the blade.