Simulation analysis of savonius turbine with self-rotating blades

This paper analyzed the advantages of traditional Savonius (S-type) turbine and the reasons of its low efficiency, proposed a new type of turbine with self-rotating blades and surrounded by a rectifier, and studied the aerodynamic performance by numerical simulations. The turbine is composed of a rectifier and a rotor, the rectifier consists by straight and arc segments which can accelerate the wind speed and adjust the inflow wind angle. The self-rotating blade can reduce the impacted area acting on the leeward blade by wind and arm of the impact torque, therefore reduces the resistant torque of the blade, and the driving torque acting on the windward blade is almost the same with traditional S-type turbine, which can increase the overall driving torque. The result shows that the new turbine has the advantages as below: wide range of wind speed for effective working, high power coefficient (Cp), suitable for low wind speed aera etc. Although the flow field in S-type turbine is complex separating flow, the performance of the turbine proposed in this paper is improved and is better than traditional S-type turbine in numerical simulation which is worth for spreading.