Performance comparison for savonius type wind turbines by numerical analysis approaches

Wind energy is a clean and renewable energy resource and has been paid more and more attention by scholars around the world. As a drag-drive n type Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT), traditional Savonius wind rotor has disadvantage of low wind energy utilization but has a lot of the advantages compare d with Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) and lift-driven VAWTs. A fish-ridged wind rotor is proposed based Savonius rotor to improve the flow field characteristics. In this paper, the two wind rotors are analyzed and compared by computational fluid dynamics approach. The simulation results show that the flow field of the fish-ridged rotor is smoother than the Savonius rotor and the maximum value of wind energy utilization of the former rotor is bigger than that of the latter. It indicates that the ne w type of the rotor has good performance.