Blade Modification and Performance Analysis of Micro Savonius Rotor

  • Yasir Ali
Keywords: Blade flatness, Configuration, Renewable energy, Wind energy, Savonius rotor.

Abstract

The increasing need for energy and bad impacts of conventional sources of energy on the environment, especially in Pakistan, has shown to the quest for sustainable, environment-friendly and clean energy resource. Wind energy can be the best option in this regard. Savonius rotor is simple vertical axis wind turbine which is illustrated as economical, simplistic in design and construction and has satisfying starting torque at lower wind speeds. This makes it capable of generating mechanical energy at low wind speed.
In the present work improvement in the construction of conventional Savonius blade was suggested to discover the best configuration of Savonius blade design. Flatness in the Savonius blade originating from the shaft of the rotor was proposed in four steps i.e. 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% flatness. Above four blade configurations were designed, manufactured and tested. The performance of four configurations of the blade was investigated and then compared with the conventional form of Savonius blade (model-1). According to the observation, the blade configuration with 25%, 50%, and 75% flatness are comparable with the conventional Savonius configuration, whereas the blade configuration with 100% flatness contributes unoptimistic performance. The blade configuration with 50% flatness is more effective than the conventional Savonius configuration which gives 74% optimum increase with its performance.

Published
2017-12-29