Darrieus wind turbine analysis - Glauert empirical formula Page 1 of 2

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Glauert empirical formula

A wind turbine is expected to slow/retard down a blowing wind and in this process
extracting a portion of its kinetic energy while a propeller/fan accelerate a wind and transfer
a portion of energy to the wind. A Darrieus wind turbine exhibits both behaviour of retarding
and accelerating the wind speed. At the wind assisted side where the airfoil moves nearly
parallel and in direction of wind speed (i.e. 180degree), the faster moving symmetry airfoil
actually ‘drags’ the wind to move faster. However, for the rest of the angular position, the
Darrieus act normally like a wind turbine retarding the incoming wind. This retardation is
especially strong around the front (90degree) and around the back (270 degree) position.
When solidity and or tip speed ratio is high, this retardation became even stronger.

Thrust coefficient versus axial interference factor

The momentum equation predicts that thrust force increase with increasing retardation (or
induction factor) of wind speed. However, after induction factor of 0.5, the thrust is
predicted to decrease, as shown in figure above, which is not logical. The real situation is
actually the thrust keeps on increasing with more retardation of the wind speed. Data
collected from wind turbines, autogiros, and helicopters (as shown in the figure above)
proves that the thrust coefficient increases with induction factor in this turbulent wake state
instead of decreasing as predicted by momentum theory. An empirical formula published by
Glauert also predicts increasing thrust coefficient between the induction factor range of 0.4
to 1.0 with thrust increasing from 0.96 to 2.0. Therefore, the momentum equation is not
applicable after 0.5 or more precisely 0.4.

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Darrieus wind turbine analysis - Glauert empirical formula Page 2 of 2

The streamtube models must be modified to address the failure of momentum equation at
that region. A crude approximation is made by modeling the Glauert empirical formula with
a straight line between the 0.4 to 1.0 induction factor range. It has to be noted that the
thrust coefficient data was very probably collected for the whole rotor swept area so the
thrust coefficient and induction factor was probably an average value

References
Spera, D. A. (Editor) (1994), Wind turbine technology: Fundamental concepts of wind
turbine engineering. New York, ASME Press.

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Last updated at November 6, 2002
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