Numerical analysis of Magnus wind turbine

Magnus rotor is essentially a rotating cylinder that generates lift due to Magnus effect. The effect has been generating curiosity in a wide variety of fields ranging from sports to alternate energy. The wind turbine under investigation replaces tradition blades that have an airfoil cross-section, with such Magnus rotors. In this paper, Magnus wind turbines with three and five rotors have been analyzed at various velocity ratios and tip speed ratios. The primary motive is to find the best operating conditions for obtaining a higher lift to drag coefficient for both three and five rotor turbines, so that it can generate more power with the least available wind. It has been observed that the higher ratio of coefficient of lift to coefficient of drag values were obtained for lower values of tip speed ratio, which is in contrast to the requirement of higher tip speed ratios for turbines with airfoil cross-section. This translates to the fact that Magnus wind turbines can be an efficient solution to the generation of wind power with less noise generation, since the noise generated by a wind turbine decreases with decrease in the tip speed ratio.