Energy 58 (2013) 483e493

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Energy
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Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) mesh independency techniques

for a straight blade vertical axis wind turbine
K.M. Almohammadi a, b, *, D.B. Ingham a, L. Ma a, M. Pourkashan a
a
Centre for Computational Fluid Dynamics, Energy Technology and Innovation Initiative (ETTI), University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Taibah University, Medina, Saudi Arabia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper numerically investigates four methods, namely mesh refinement, General Richardson
Received 5 February 2013 Extrapolation (GRE), Grid Convergence Index (GCI), and the fitting method, in order to obtain a mesh
Received in revised form independent solution for a straight blade vertical axis wind turbine (SB-VAWT) power curve using
31 May 2013
computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The solution is produced by employing the 2D Unsteady Navier
Accepted 2 June 2013
Available online 17 July 2013
eStokes equations (URANS) with two turbulence models (Shear Stress Transport (SST) Transitional and
ReNormalized Groups (RNG) k
3 models). The commonly applied mesh refinement is found to be
computationally expensive and not often practical even for a full 2D model of the turbine. The mesh
Keywords:
Straight blade vertical axis wind turbine
independent power coefficient produced using the General Richardson Extrapolation method is found to
(SB-VAWT) be encouraging. However, the Grid Convergence Index may not be applicable in mesh independency
Darrieus turbines tests due to the oscillatory behaviour of the convergence for the turbine power coefficient. As an
Grid independency alternative, the fitting method shows a good potential for the predicting of the mesh independent power
Computational fluid dynamics modelling coefficient without the necessity to consider a massive number of meshes.
Richardson Extrapolation Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Over the past ten years or so there has been an increasingly
more rapid advances in the applications of the computational fluid
dynamics for vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). This has been
mainly driven by the development of the computational power and
the complexity of the flow around the turbine which is modelled
using this technique. The computational fluid dynamics is based on
the concept of Reynolds averaging of the unsteady NaviereStokes
equations, widely known as (URANS), which are considered by
Leishman [1,2] to be the most appropriate method for analyzing
nonlinear viscous flows providing that a suitable turbulence model
is employed. In term of VAWT, this nonlinearity is enhanced by the
presence of the dynamic stall phenomenon due to the rapid change
in the angle of attack of the blades during turbine operation.
Vertical axis wind turbines are known to potentially perform
better in urban regions when compared to horizontal axis wind
turbines due to the fact that vertical axis wind turbines do not
require alignment to the oncoming flow. The wind flow in urban
* Centre for Computational Fluid Dynamics, Energy Technology and Innovation
Initiative (ETTI), University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. Tel.: þ44 (0)113 3435113;
fax: þ44 113 246 7310.
E-mail addresses: ml07kma@leeds.ac.uk, Doctorkmsa@gmail.com
(K.M. Almohammadi).
regions continuously changes direction and this makes the vertical
axis wind turbines a good candidate for harnessing this kind of
multidirectional flow of the wind. However, the wind flow speed in
urban regions is relatively low and also extremely turbulent, and
this adds an extra complexity to the fluid flow structure [3].
The flow around one blade at low speed in the presence of dy-
namic stall has been extensively studied by many researchers using
computational fluid dynamics in both the wind turbine and heli-
copter community and the general features of the flow has been
identified. As the angle of attack increases, an increased adverse
pressure is developed over the airfoil surface, thus causing the flow
separation and reattachment, and this initiates the dynamic stall
[4e8] which results in an overshoot in the lift coefficient followed
by a sudden loss in the lift due to vortex shedding. The failure to
capture the dynamic stall accurately would result in a wrong pre-
diction of the turbine overall performance. Despite the extensive
experimental [9e17] and modelling [6e8,18] of the dynamic stall,
the dynamic stall is not fully understood [19].
Another flow feature that significantly affects the turbine per-
formance is the laminar transition bubbles which mainly occur due
to the laminar-turbulence transition. These bubbles are formed
near the airfoil surface in the micro scale and move towards the
leading edge of the airfoil where they combine and become more
apparent [20e25]. The laminar separation bubbles may signifi-
cantly affect the performance prediction if not accurately modelled

0360-5442/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2013.06.012
484 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493
and they could be predicted by employing transitional turbulence
models such as the Transition SST (Shear Stress Transport) model
[26,27] and the n2
f model.
Capturing the flow features of the wind turbine requires a
comprehensive understanding of the physics involved in VAWTs in
order to create a sufficient mesh topology. Achieving a mesh in-
dependent solution is an essential step in analyzing the results
obtained using computational fluid dynamic techniques. However,
there is no specific method in the literature on how to achieve a
mesh independent solution for VATWs.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mesh indepen-
dence of the predicted power coefficient of a straight blade vertical
axis wind turbine (SB-VAWT) by employing four methods, namely
grid refinement, General Richardson Extrapolation (GRE), Grid
Convergence Index (GCI), and the fitting method. The analyses are
validated by the available experimental data from the literature
[28,29]. Applying these methods may make the results obtained by
applying the computational fluid dynamics reliable before per-
forming experimental investigations, and this is extremely impor-
tant for the design and optimization of the turbine.
2. Mesh independent solution for the vertical axis wind
turbine
2.1. Single airfoil
The presence of complex flow regimes in the vicinity of a
straight blade of the vertical axis wind turbines and the errors
generated from the computational techniques makes the modelling
of the turbine a challenging task, especially at low tip speed ratios
(TSR < 5) which are typically employed in urban regions [16] and
throughout this paper the term TSR refers to the ratio of the rota-
tional speed of the blade to the undisturbed wind. However, the
computational power and the accuracy of the solution play an
important role in the decision of the selection of the computational
technique, including the suitable turbulence model.
The solution produced using computational fluid dynamics is
affected by the physical modelling of the problem and the
computational method applied to describe the flow. The unsteady
Reynolds averaging of the NaviereStokes (URANS), with an
appropriate a turbulence model, is devoted to the capture of the
physics of the problem. However, there is no universal turbulence
model that may be applied for all the computations, and this has
resulted in different turbulence models which are based on
different physical modelling assumptions. Due to the fact that the
transition from laminar to turbulent flow is present in the straight
blade vertical axis wind turbine, the most suitable candidate is the
SST Transitional model. This model is based on the Boussinesq
assumption which relates the Reynolds stresses to the mean of the
velocity gradients [30,31]. This means that the turbulent eddy
viscosity is isotropic and this approximation results in an error
which is commonly ignored [32,33] but it requires a proper quan-
tification in wind turbine analysis in order to decide whether this
error is relatively small.
The computational method that is widely employed for solving
the unsteady Reynolds averaging NaviereStokes equations in
the computational fluid dynamics is the finite volume method
with the central-difference method [30,31]. This method has
proven its superiority in many applications providing that the
mesh independent solution is achieved. The mesh independent
solution is entirely dependent on the mesh employed to capture
the fluid flow and also the physical model that is capable to
describe the physics related to the problem studied. In this paper,
it is assumed that the transitional model, the SST Transition
model, is capable of capturing the underlying flow physics of the
vertical axis wind turbine since it has shown encouraging results
compared to the experimental data in several different applica-
tions [26,27,34].
The mesh independent solution is produced by eliminating the
effect of several factors, such as rounding, iterative, and dis-
cretization errors, and therefore refining the mesh is considered to
be a remedy for the reduction of these errors by many researchers.
It is important to highlight that the agreement of the predicted
power coefficient with the experimental results does not neces-
sarily mean that the solution is mesh independent. Achieving a
mesh independent solution must be produced in the absence of
experimental results. Once the solution is mesh independent then
it can be compared against the experimental data. However, the
complexity of the flow regimes and the computational power re-
quirements for analyzing the straight axis wind turbine lead re-
searchers to simplify the analysis of the vertical axis wind turbines
by studying one airfoil at different static angles of attack or by
considering an oscillating airfoil for the purpose of understanding
the flow complexity related to this kind of turbines. These as-
sumptions could result in misleading conclusions. For example,
Worasinchai [35] examined four different 2D airfoils at angles of
incident to the oncoming flow from 0 to 360  in increments of 2 
in order to apply the results to wind turbines. He employed two
meshes, using approximately 27,000 cells and 73,000 cells and his
analysis did not capture the laminar separation bubble at high
angels of attack on the suction side of the blade. This could be due
to the non-appropriate turbulence model applied or not employ-
ing a sufficient number of points on the blade surface. However,
there is no explanation in his work on whether the solution is
mesh independent or not but the mesh independent solution
problem has been recognized by many researches. Castelli [36]
employed four mesh topologies with different resolutions and as
a result he created 40 meshes in order to examine their effect on
the lift and drag coefficients, and this requires enormous compu-
tational power if the same process is to be applied for the three
blade analysis of wind turbines. In another study, Spentzos [37]
has compared 2D and 3D dynamic stall analysis for a wind tur-
bine blade. He performed a sensitivity analysis on three meshes for
the 3D case, namely 420,000, 1,700,000 and 3,100,000 cells. It is
clear from his work that in order to obtain a mesh independent
solution from the refined meshes, then massive computational
power is required if the same procedure to be applied for the three
blade wind turbine. In cases such as the one studied by Gleize [38],
a mesh independent solution may not be achieved when
employing the finest mesh for which he could obtain a converged
solution. In his study, he started the 2D analysis for one fixed airfoil
with 33,153 points and refined the mesh to 3,456,105 points and he
concluded that the mesh independent solution has not yet been
achieved.
On oscillating airfoils, Yu [39] has employed a fixed mesh size
of 70,000 elements with 400 points on the airfoil surface, which is
relatively low for accurately resolving the dynamic stall which will
be explained in more detail in Section 2.2. He did not explain
whether the results obtained are mesh independent. However,
Wang [7] has employed three meshes for the URANS computa-
tions with 80,000, 180,000, 605,000 cells and he concluded that
the 605,000 cell results agreed well with the experimental data of
Lee [40]. He may have agreement with the experimental data but
it is not necessarily a mesh independent solution. Another
important investigation of obtaining mesh independent solution
for the dynamic stall analysis by employing an oscillating airfoil
has been performed by Richter [41]. Three meshes are created
with a systematic grid refinement in all directions for the base
mesh and this resulted in a fine mesh size of about 400,000 points
on which a mesh independent solution is achieved. However, it
 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493
should be noted that this is for only one airfoil and not for a wind
turbine.
From the above studies, it is clear that mesh independent so-
lutions for only one 2D airfoil requires a mesh size of at least about
400,000 cells. Therefore, analyzing a three blade wind turbine will
require a massive number of meshes and therefore a mesh inde-
pendent solution will be computationally very expensive if we are
to follow the same procedures of mesh refinement. A possible so-
lution is to use super computers, or very high performance servers
to perform such calculations.
2.2. Full turbine model (three blades)
In the previous section, it is clear that the predicted power co-
efficient is sensitive to the mesh size and a mesh independent so-
lution is not a straight forward task. In some cases, the mesh
independent study for one airfoil fails to obtain satisfactory
convergence. This is due to the complexity of the flow and the
sensitivity of the predicted power coefficient, and therefore the
mesh independency study is extremely important in order to
explain the results obtained by employing computational fluid
dynamics. However, the modelling of the full turbine model with
three blades is more difficult than that of one blade and the mesh
sensitivity may not be practical, especially if the computational
fluid dynamics is going to be employed as a design tool. The
computational power is also another limiting factor for obtaining a
mesh independent solution.
Kaminsky [42] created a full 3D model of a vertical axis wind
turbine and the mesh is refined up to 6,000,000 cells and yet a
mesh independent solution is not achieved. This indicates that at
some flow conditions, or for some geometrical reasons, a mesh
independent solution is a very challenging task. However, Castelli
[43] managed to achieve a mesh independent solution for his full
model with 5,000,000 cells, whereas Untaroiu [44] obtained a
mesh independent solution with 7,900,000 cells. Also, the grid
refinement study performed by Li [45] resulted in 5,267,600 cells in
order to obtain a mesh independent solution. Moreover, Rossetti
[46] obtained a mesh independent solution with a mesh size of
8,870,576 nodes. Therefore, it is clear that the mesh independency
test is computationally expensive and may not be practical when
performing the mesh refinement technique. If the mesh is relatively
coarse for a full 3D model, namely 1,300,000 cells, as in the case of
Howell [47], the prediction error was about 20% different from the
experimental data. Even though these studies claim that a mesh
independent solution has been achieved, the refinement process is
not clearly explained.
Because of these difficulties, many researchers have focused on
analyzing the full 2D model of a vertical axis wind turbine and
achieving mesh independent solution before considering the full
3D model. McLaren [48] has produced a mesh independent solu-
tion with a 989 elements on each airfoil and a mesh size of 485,000
nodes. However, a systematic refinement of the mesh from 600,000
to 1,000,000 has been performed by Castelli [49] until a mesh in-
dependent solution is obtained. It is important to highlight that
coarse meshes, of the order of 100,000e300,000, have been
employed by some researchers [50e53]. In these cases, a non-
transitional model has been applied and/or the number of the
cells on the airfoil surface is fixed. This has resulted in a smooth
solution but not necessarily a mesh independent solution and a
further mesh independency analysis is required. A more detailed
mesh independency study has been performed by Maître [54]
where he has systematically employed seven meshes. However,
six of the meshes have exactly the same number of cells on the
blades, and this makes his mesh independent solution not to be
necessarily accurate. Similarly, Mohamed [55] did not mention
485
explicitly how many cells are employed on the airfoil surface but his
mesh size of 130,000 cells suggests that the number of cells near
airfoil surface is fixed.
In the cases where a mesh independent solution is satisfactorily
obtained for the full 2D model of the wind turbine, it is found that
the performance of the turbine is over predicted by up to 75e95%
when compared to the experimental data [45,47,49]. Also, the peak
in the power coefficient of the turbine is shifted by about 0.5e1.5 to
a higher tip speed ratio. A similar behaviour has been found
experimentally by Kooiman [29,47] when the struts are aero-
dynamically improved. In the full 2D model of the turbine, the
struts are not present and as a result a higher peak of the turbine
power coefficient with a shifted tip speed ratio is expected if the
modelling is performed accurately and the mesh independent so-
lution is obtained. Although extensive research has been performed
on obtaining reasonable results compared to experimental data, so
far, no single study exists in the literature which adequately covers
a mesh independency study.
3. Computational scheme
3.1. Computational domain and grid
All the studies reviewed so far have focused on obtaining results
which are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data.
However, the results obtained in some of the cases found in the
literature may not necessarily be mesh independent. Therefore, it is
extremely important to apply different techniques in order to obtain
a mesh independent solution in the wind turbine community. For
this reason, a full 2D turbine model is created on the basis of the
experimental set up by Bravo et al. [28,29]. The turbine consists of
three straight blades of NACA0015 airfoils with 0.4 m as chord length
and a curved trailing edge of 0.1c (0.04 m) equally spaced in a radius
of 3.125c by 120  where the blade heights are 7.5c.
The 2D full model of the turbine is created for use in the com-
putations by assembling a circular rotating region in a rectangular
stationary region where the rectangular stationary region is 87.5c
in length and 50c in width, and the circular rotating region has a
diameter of 17.5c. Different domain dimensions and circular re-
gions have been investigated by McLaren [56] and this domain size
was found to be sufficiently far from the turbine that it does not
affect the computations, and therefore this domain has been
employed for all the computations presented in this paper. For the
rectangular stationary domain, the upstream side of the rectangle is
set as an inlet boundary condition whereas the downstream side is
set as a pressure outlet boundary with two wall boundaries to both
the sides of the rectangle. The boundary where the rectangular
stationary region is connected to the circular rotating region is set
as an interface boundary condition in order to employ the sliding
mesh technique (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. 2D schematic of the computational domain employed for the investigated
straight blade vertical axis wind turbine.
486 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493
Based on the recommendations of Almohammadi [5], quadri-
lateral cells are employed for creating the computational domain
where the near blade region is created as a structured mesh and an
unstructured mesh is used in the regions far from the blade. For a
high quality structured mesh near the blade, it is essential to esti-
mate the boundary layer thickness and the distance of the first
node from the blade surface that ensures a value of (the relative
distance of the first node from the surface of the airfoil) of about 1.
Based on the flow Reynolds number (Rec ¼ rcUN/m ¼ 2.83  105)
with an upwind velocity of 10 m/s and a chord length of 0.4 m it is
estimated that the boundary layer thickness is about 0.752 mm.
The actual boundary layer thickness is less than this value since this
is based on the upwind wind velocity whereas the local velocity is
relatively higher than 10 m/s, and this reduces the boundary layer
thickness. On this base, seven meshes have been created to perform
the mesh independency studies using the SST Transitional model
and five meshes have been created to perform the mesh indepen-
dency studies using the ReNormalized Groups (RNG) k
3 model by
employing the grid refinement, General Richardson Extrapolation
(GRE), Grid Convergence Index (GCI), and the fitting method.
3.2. Turbulence model and simulation
The accuracy and the computational power required to be used
to analyze the vertical axis wind turbine modelling are highly
dependent on the selection of the turbulence model. The turbu-
lence models available are mainly based on averaging the transport
quantities in the NaviereStokes equations. In a vertical axis wind
turbine, the transition of the flow from laminar to turbulent near
the blade, the flow separation and the reattachment, and the
laminar separation bubbles occurrence on the airfoil surface are all
very important factors that need to be considered in the selection of
the most appropriate turbulence model. The family of k
3 and
k
u models do not account for the transition of the flow in their
original forms. Durban [57] extended the k
3 model and proposed
the n2
f model which is a four equation model that is known to
perform well in separated and transitional flows [58,59]. On the
other hand, Menter and Langtry [26,27,60] extended the SST k
u
model by incorporating two additional equations, namely the
intermittency and the momentum thickness, and developed the
SST Transition model which is also a four equation model. Due to
the computational effort required by the n2
f model, the SST
Transitional model is employed for all the computations presented
in this paper. However, understanding the convergence indepen-
dency study for non-transitional models is attractive due to the
significantly lower requirements in the time of computations and
the computational effort which may be half compared to the
transitional models. Therefore, the RNG k
3 model, which was
developed by Yakhot [61], is also employed in the computations
presented in this paper due to its sensitivity to the rapid changes in
the turbulence quantities that occurs in such flows. This will pro-
vide an insight into the mesh independency study when the near
blade region is approximated by employing the standard wall
function and in the modelling the flow to the blade surface.
3.3. Mesh convergence solution
The first step towards obtaining a mesh independent solution is
to achieve a mesh converged solution and an iterative converged
solution. The former could be obtained when the monitoring var-
iables, in this case the average torque produced by the three blades
of the turbine, stabilizes as the turbine continues rotating. The
latter is obtained when the set tolerance in the residuals of the
computed variables are reached during the computations. It is
important to highlight that the mesh converged solution and the
iterative converged solution are performed using the same mesh.
When the mesh converged solution does not change as the mesh is
refined then the mesh independent solution is considered to be
achieved, and this is discussed in more detail in Section 4.
The case investigated in this paper is run at different tip speed
ratios ranging from 0.5 to 5 and the turbulence intensity level and
the turbulent length scale are fixed in all the computations to be
0.5% and 0.028 m (0.07c), respectively, whereas the residuals are
set to 10
5 for all the variables which has been specified after
consecutive investigations that show that this value is sufficiently
small.
The mesh is prepared to start the computations by employing a
segregated pressure based solver, known as the SIMPLE algorithm
[62,63], where the pressure field is corrected by enforcing the mass
conservation in the numerical scheme resulted from the pressure
and velocity coupling [64]. The least squares method has been
employed for calculating the gradients of the transport quantities
on the faces of the cell boundaries. All the computations were
started by employing a first-order upwind scheme for the spatial
and temporal discretization in order to generate a smooth solution,
and then the spatial discretization was set to the second-order
accurate upwind scheme. The time step was set to be
8.975979  10
5 s in order to ensure an accurate temporal dis-
cretization and small Courant number [5]. At each time step, the
torque produced by all three blades was computed, and then this
value was averaged with the other values produced at the previous
time steps for one revolution, see Fig. 2.
If the averaged torque after one full rotation does not differ in
each time step by more than 2%, then the solution is considered to
be a mesh converged solution, i.e.
Avraged torque at each time step
Converegnce ¼  0:02
Avreaged torque per one revolution
(1)
This is a sensitive measure to the mesh convergence since it
requires two full rotations with no change in the torque in order to
decide the mesh convergence. The commercial software applied in
all the computations and the mesh generation are ANSYS FLUENT
and GAMBIT, respectively. It is important to highlight that in this
investigation it has been noticed that a mesh size of half million
cells requires a computational time of about 24 h on a server of 20
processors in order to achieve the convergence.
4. Mesh independency test
Seven different meshes, as illustrated in Table 1, are created in
order to examine the mesh independent solution for the studied
SB-VAWT by employing the SST Transitional model based on pre-
dicting the power coefficient which is calculated from the obtained
averaged torque. The meshes are created in the recommended
tolerance for applying this turbulence model in order to predict the
power coefficient and to estimate the exact power coefficient using
four different methods, namely grid systematic refinement, General
Richardson Extrapolation (GRE) method, Grid Convergence Index
(GCI), and the curve fitting method. To explain the procedures
employed for obtaining a mesh independent solution, the analysis
in Sections 4.1e4.3 are shown at a tip speed ratio of 1.75 and the
same procedure could be applied for tip speed ratios 0.5e5. For
Section 4.4, the mesh independency study is shown for the tip
speed ratios in the range 0.5e5. For the meshes M6, M5, and M4,
the structured mesh near the blade is doubled as the mesh is
refined and the unstructured mesh size is maintained. Doubling the
number of mesh points further is not computationally practical
even though it may appear to be necessary, therefore M3 has been
 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493 487

Table 2
Grid size and predicted power coefficient for the RNG k
3 model at TSR 1.75.

Mesh Nodes on Mesh size Estimated power

airfoil surface (cells) coefficient (cpestimated)

M11 600 338,394 0.427

M22 600 222,155 0.392
M33 600 85,000 0.439
M44 600 48,961 0.444
M55 600 23,806 0.471

order to examine whether the oscillatory behaviour is captured by

employing the investigated techniques, namely the mesh refine-
ment and the fitting method.

4.1. Grid resolution

Increasing the grid resolution based on the prior knowledge of

the physics of the problem is the most common procedure in
searching for a mesh independent solution. This approach could be
expensive when considering the case of a full model of SB-VAWTs.
Therefore, analyzing a 2D case is vital in order to estimate the
computational effort required to obtain a mesh independent
solution.
In the case of SB-VAWTs, the region near the airfoils exposed to
the complex flow features, namely separation and dynamic stall,
and therefore increasing the mesh resolution in the regions near
the airfoil is a clear option. The mesh is refined in the grids M7 to
M2 and the predicted power coefficient is increased from 0.218 to
0.371, as seen in Fig. 3(a).

Fig. 2. Mesh convergence for M3 (see Table 1) at a tip speed ratio 1.75 using the SST
Transitional model (the time step is normalized to the maximum time of
computations).

created with 5000 nodes on the airfoil surface. To apply the Grid
Convergence Index, M2 and M1 are systematically refined from M5
by splitting the quadrilateral cells in the whole domain into four
cells, namely M2 ¼ 4  M5 and M1 ¼ 8  M5. Further, M7 has been
created so that there is about 10% of M2 and this, namely 50,000e
500,000 cells, is employed in the mesh fitting method.
The meshes in Table 1 are created to apply the SST Transitional
model. Therefore, to apply the RNG k
3 model, five meshes have
been created and the near wall mesh is carefully generated in order
to apply the standard wall function approach which significantly
reduces the mesh size. These meshes are shown in Table 2. On the
airfoil surface, 600 nodes have been employed and maintained in

Table 1
Grid size and predicted power coefficient for the SST Transitional model at TSR 1.75.

Mesh Nodes on airfoil Mesh Estimated power

surface size (cells) coefficient (cpestimated)

M1 7552 2,168,096 0.340

M2 3776 542,024 0.370
M3 5000 495,926 0.361
M4 3776 235,388 0.321
M5 1888 135,506 0.276
Fig. 3. The power coefficient at tip speed ratio 1.75 for the SST Transitional model for
M6 944 84,843 0.267
(a) all investigated meshes normalized to M1, (b) systematic refinement normalized to
M7 400 52,870 0.218
M1, (c) and for the RNG k
3 model for all investigated meshes normalized to M11.
488 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493

It is important to note that the mesh in the regions away from
the airfoils is not changed in the meshes M7 to M3. Therefore extra
caution should be taken into account when applying this approach
since the results obtained may not be reliable. M4 and M2 have
exactly the same near wall cell distribution and the power coeffi-
cient is slightly affected by the change in the mesh in the region
away from the airfoil, and this accounts for only about 10% to 15%
difference in the predicted power coefficient. It is clear from Fig. 3
that the mesh independency is not satisfactorily achieved by
employing the traditional mesh refinement approaches, whether
this refinement is performed in the regions where the flow is
significantly complex, namely near the blades, or by the use of
systematic refinement. The results shows that the power coefficient
may not be always smooth and may in addition be oscillating and
very computationally expensive. This oscillation in the power co-
efficient is also present when the RNG k
3 model is employed,
seen Fig. 3(c). It is possible that if the predicted power coefficient is
not near the mesh independent power coefficient, the predicted
power coefficient may, misleadingly, appear to be converging
smoothly and only a systematic refinement of the mesh could
detect this oscillation as seen in Fig. 3(b).
4.2. General Richardson Extrapolation method
The basic principle of the Richardson method relies on using the
convergence and refinement rate to estimate the exact solution
from the expansion series for the errors [65e67]. Implementing the
methods results in the following estimation:
cp1
cp2
cpexact ¼ cp1 þ þ H:O:T
rp
1
This method requires at least three meshes in order to calculate
the order of accuracy (p), see equation (3), and two meshes to es-
timate the exact power coefficient where the subscription 1 refers
to the solution obtained on the fine mesh and 3 to the solution
obtained on the coarse mesh in order to obtain a reasonable esti-
mate of the power coefficient of the turbine. If mesh refinement is
not systematic, namelyr12 s r23 (note: r12 refers the refinement
ratio from between mesh 2 and 1 and r23 refers to the refinement
ratio between mesh 3 and 2), therefore the order of accuracy (p)
will be governed by the transcendental expression:
n 
cp  o
p p
ln r12old
1 cp 3
cp
cp
2
þ r12old
pnew ¼
2 1
lnðr12 r32 Þ
and equation (3) is iteratively solved [68].
Since the computation for predicting the turbine power coeffi-
cient is second-order, then the formal order of accuracy of the
truncation error of the results produced by the grid should be two
(i.e. p ¼ 2). Solution independency is judged by comparing the
calculated and the formal order of the accuracy of the truncation
error. Roy [69] suggested that the calculated order of the accuracy
has to be higher than the formal order of the accuracy in order to
estimate the true numerical solution, and in our case this is the
power coefficient, from the fine mesh.
However, before performing the mesh independency study us-
ing this method, it is necessary to calculate the apparent conver-
gence condition [68,70,71] as given by the equation:
R* > 1 Monotonic divergence
1 > R* > 0 Monotonic convergence
0 > R* >
1 Oscillatory convergence
R* <
1 Oscillatory divergence
In order to apply the General Richardson Extrapolation method,
the apparent convergence condition has to be monotonic conver-
gence. All the configurations that satisfy this condition of the
apparent convergence are shown in Table 3. Also, all the negative
orders of accuracy obtained are excluded from the calculations
since these do not compare with the formal order of accuracy.
It is clear from Table 3 that the estimation of the power coeffi-
cient that has an order of accuracy close to, or higher than, 2 are
0.342 and 0.291. However, the order of the accuracy near 8 is not
desirable, as will be discussed in more details in Section 5.
The estimated power coefficients shown in Table 4 are relatively
similar and they are all higher than the estimated power coefficient
when employing the SST Transitional model and this is mainly due
to the application of the standard wall function and the low number
of points employed on the blade surface. By not including the near
wall regions when employing the RNG k
3 model, part of the
physics is not estimated and not modelled, and this causes the RNG
k
3 model over estimates the power coefficient.
4.3. Grid Convergence Index (GCI)
The concept of the Grid Convergence Index (GCI) is derived from
the General Richardson Extrapolation method and it was proposed
by Roache in 1994 [70]. It relates the error produced from sys-
tematic grid refinements or coarsening to the error produced when
(2) doubling or halving the grid size (r ¼ 2) using the second-order
method (p ¼ 2). Meshes M5, M2, and M1 are systematically
refined by doubling the grid size wherer12 ¼ r23 ¼ 2. However, the
convergence condition is calculated and found to be
0.319, and as
a result the convergence condition is that of oscillatory conver-
gence. This is possibly due to the unsteadiness, the nonlinearity,
and the complexity of the flow around the turbine blades. There-
fore, an oscillatory convergence method, namely the fitting
method, is considered for predicting the mesh independent solu-
tion and this method is discussed in more details in Section 4.4.
4.4. Fitting method
The analyses presented in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 are based on the
(3) General Richardson Extrapolation method which is only valid when
the convergence condition is monotonic. When the solution of the
predicted power coefficient is oscillating then this condition is
violated and the assumptions on which the Richardson method is
based is no longer valid for estimating the error in the solution. Due
to the complexity of the flow, and the presence of dynamic stall, the
solution may exhibit an oscillation. The convergence condition
Table 3
Estimated power coefficient using the General Richardson Extrapolation method for
the SST Transitional model.
Meshes Calculated R* Estimated power
order of coefficient (cpestimated)
accuracy (p)

M7 M6 M5 7.15 0.184 0.291

cp2
cp1
R* ¼ (4) M7 M4 M3 0.442 0.388 0.397
cp3
cp2 M7 M4 M2 0.274 0.476 0.408
M7 M4 M1 2.41 0.184 0.342
M5 M4 M3 1.3 0.889 0.397
and it is based on the R* value of the convergence conditions which M5 M4 M1 4.38 0.422 0.342
is defined as follows:
 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493 489

Table 4 (p ¼ 2). It is important to note that as the tip speed ratio increases,
Estimated power coefficient using the General Richardson Extrapolation method for the turbine rotates faster and this increases the tip vortex and the
the RNG k
3 model.
3D effects on the flow and therefore as a result the 2D full model
Meshes Calculated order R* Estimated power produces more error in the predicted power coefficient when
of accuracy (p) coefficient (cpestimated) compared to the results obtained from the full 3D model and the
M55 M44 M33 4.33 0.185 0.432 experiment data.
M55 M44 M11 2.48 0.63 0.424
M55 M33 M11 1.61 0.375 0.423
5. Discussion

The rotation of the turbine, nonlinearity of the dynamic stall,

tested in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 show that in some cases the solution
condition has an oscillatory convergence. In the fitting method, the
Taylor expansion of the discretization error is employed as follows:
cpmesh ¼ cpexact þ ap hp þ apþ1 hpþ1 þ H:O:T
Two numerical schemes are extracted from equation (5) and
employed in the fitting of the predicted power coefficient, namely
p ¼ 1 and p ¼ 2 for the first-order, equation (6), and the second-
order accurate scheme, equation (7), respectively, namely
cpmesh ¼ cpexact þ ah þ a2 h2
cpmesh ¼ cpexact þ a2 h2
First, the power coefficient is evaluated at h where h is [1/mesh
size]2, and then plotted in order to fit a curve that represents the
solution convergence. The intersection of the fitted curve of the
predicted power coefficients is considered to be the exact numer-
ical power coefficient, and therefore this value is considered to be
the mesh independent power coefficient.
It is observed in Fig. 4 that both schemes tend to predict similar
numerical power coefficients. The trend of the convergence is
similar for the SST Transitional model (1st and 2nd order upwind
schemes) and the RNG k
3 model. It is of interest to note that the
nonlinearity of the convergence is not captured when the RNG k
3
model is employed. This is mainly because of the nonlinearity that
is developed in the boundary layer which is approximated here
using the standard wall function. For the SST Transitional model,
the first-order accurate scheme captures the nonlinearity since it
solves the turbulence quantities to the blade wall. However, the
standard error (SE) in the second-order scheme is less than the
standard error in the first-order scheme, and therefore it is
assumed to be reliable for approximating the fitting of the power
coefficient because the formal order of the accuracy is second-order
and the unsteadiness of the flow supports the possibility that the
flow may exhibit an oscillatory behaviour. The computational po-
wer requirement makes obtaining a mesh independent solution for
the power coefficient difficult using the traditional mesh refine-
(5) ment techniques. The oscillatory behaviour of the power coefficient
appears when the solution is close to the mesh independent power
coefficient. This may explain the massive mesh requirement in
order to obtain a satisfactory converged solution for the power
coefficient as discussed in Section 2. However, the systematic mesh
refinement shows clear evidence of this oscillation in the power
coefficient as seen in Fig. 3(b).
(6) If the meshes employed for computing the power coefficient are
relatively coarse and the predicted power coefficient is not near the
true numerical solution, then the solution oscillates towards the
(7)
true numerical solution. In this case, the convergence condition is
evaluated in order to employ the General Richardson Extrapolation
method, as explained in Section 4.2. The values of the predicted
power coefficient that satisfy 1 < R* < 0 and p > 0 are only consid-
ered to be valid for predicting the power coefficient. It is stated by
Roy [69] that the extracted order of accuracy is p þ 1 order accurate,
and therefore the extracted order of accuracy higher than the
formal order of accuracy and close to p þ 1 is desirable. From
Table 3, it can be seen that the predicted power coefficient obtained
by employing the SST Transitional model is 0.342 at p values of 2.41
and 4.38 which compares well with the experimental value of 0.34.
An order of the accuracy higher than eight is not permissible
[72,73], and therefore the order of accuracy of 7.15 is not reliable. On
the other hand, the power coefficient predictions using the RNG
k
3 model are very close to each other with a predicted value of
about 0.425 with p values of 1.61, 2.48, and 4.33. This value is
relatively high compared to the experimental data and the main
reason for this is that the approximation of the flow near the blade
using the standard wall function and the low number of cells on the
airfoil surface. The use of a low number of cells is deliberate in order
to examine the assumption of the oscillatory power coefficient on

Fig. 4. Curve fitting for the (a) first-order, and (b) second-order accurate schemes at TSR 1.75 for the 1st and 2nd order upwind schemes for the SST Transitional and the RNG k
3
models.
490 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493
the coarse meshes. Applying the standard wall function method
causes the loss of the near wall flow details, such as the develop-
ment of the laminar separation bubbles and this is mainly the
reason for the over estimation of the power coefficient. The sys-
tematic refinement of M5, M2, and M1 are specifically created in
order to employ the grid convergence method (GCI) which esti-
mates the numerical bands with respect to the fine mesh with a
confidence interval value of about 95%. However, the convergence
condition makes this method inapplicable in this particular case
and also confirms the oscillatory behaviour in the power
coefficient.
The fitting method employed in Section 4.4 shows a great po-
tential to be employed rather than the traditional mesh refinement
methods. The computational power required for meshes of the
order of 500,000 cells is not expensive and employing the fitting
method saves the computational cost required when using much
finer meshes. The results obtained using the 1st order and 2nd order
upwind schemes, as well as the results obtained using the RNG k
3
model, all share the tendency towards the value of the power co-
efficient in the range of 0.36e0.4 when employing the first-order
and second-order accurate schemes of the Taylor expansion.
Clearly, the fitting method using the second-order accurate scheme
is better than the fitting of the first-order scheme which is clearly
seen from the standard error in Fig. 4. It is important to highlight
the power coefficients produced when employing the SST
Fig. 5. 1st and 2nd order fitting for four meshes at tip speed ratios in the range 0.5e4 for the SST Transitional model for M7, M6, M5 and M2 normalized by M2.
Transitional model (17.1% compared to the experimental data) are
closer by 15% to the experimental value of the power coefficients
produced when employing the RNG k
3 model (3.1% compared to
the experimental data). At this tip speed ratio, namely 1.75, the 3D
effect and the strut aerodynamic losses are expected to be low, and
therefore the results produced by employing the SST Transitional
model is significantly better compared to the RNG k
3 model.
The first-order and second-order fitting of the power coefficient
is performed on four meshes for the tip speed ratios investigated as
shown in Fig. 5. It is clear that there is an oscillation in the power
coefficient and there is a trend towards a mesh independent so-
lution, and this could possibly be the reason behind the massive
mesh requirement for obtaining a mesh independent solution.
However, by considering the fitting method, this difficulty is
elevated and a satisfactory power coefficient could be obtained by
employing the fitting method on four different resolution meshes.
The uncertainty in the fitting method is an important issue and it is
at present under investigation by the authors. This very interesting
result could make the study of the full 3D model more feasible and
also more reliable for designing experiments and/or optimizing the
straight blade vertical axis wind turbine.
The power curve for the turbine performance shown in Fig. 6
agrees well with the results found in the literature (see Section
2.2) for the full 2D model prediction of the turbine where the power
coefficient is over predicted by about 80% at higher tip speed ratios.
 K.M. Almohammadi et al. / Energy 58 (2013) 483e493
Fig. 6. The power curve estimated by employing the 1st and 2nd fitting method.
Even though the predicted power curve using the RNG k
3 model
appears to agree well with the experimental data as shown in Fig. 6,
important near wall flow physics is not included in the modelling
because of the application of the standard wall function. Also, the
RNG k
3 model has the capability to account for the rotational
effects of the flow in the vicinity of the blades and correct the flow
stream lines according to the blade curvature which is not imple-
mented in the SST Transitional model. Thus a further investigation
is required in this regard but this is beyond the scope and the aims
of this paper. However, employing the fitting method would
significantly improve the investigation of the full 3D model where
obtaining a mesh independent solution is extremely expensive.
At low tip speed ratios, namely TSR < 1, it is clear from Fig. 6 that
the SST Transitional model under predicts the experimental data
for the turbine power coefficient. However, this kind of turbine has
inherently a self-starting problem, as reported by many researchers
[44,46], and therefore the power coefficient at low tip speed ratios
is expected to be low and it may be difficult to accurately measure it
experimentally. Therefore, the power coefficient predication pro-
duced by employing the SST Transition model is considered to be
more reasonable compared to the power coefficient produced by
employing the RNG k
3 model.
6. Conclusions
Obtaining mesh independent solutions are an essential task and
a challenge to all researchers and designers in the wind turbine
community. This is mainly due to the sensitivity of the power co-
efficient produced by the turbine to the dynamic stall phenomenon
and the turbulence level around the blades. Therefore, it is
important to consider the full 2D model rather than employing one
blade when investigating the straight blade vertical axis wind
turbine. However, the mesh independent solution in this case re-
quires a massive number of meshes to satisfactorily achieve a mesh
independent solution. As an alternative, three methods, namely the
General Richardson Extrapolation method (GRE), the Grid
Convergence Index method (GCI) and the fitting method, are
investigated in this paper in order to understand the convergence
behaviour of this kind of turbine and obtain a mesh independent
solution of the power coefficient produced numerically by the
turbine.
The General Richardson Extrapolation method is applied and
the predicted power coefficient is considered to be mesh inde-
pendent based on two factors, namely the convergence condition
and the obtained order of the accuracy. The limitation of this
method is that the convergence condition must be monotonic
491
convergence, and therefore any oscillatory behaviour towards the
mesh independent solution is not detected. An alternative form
of the General Richardson Extrapolation method, namely the
Grid Convergence Index (GCI), is employed and because of the
oscillatory nature of the solution the fitting method is
considered.
In the fitting method, both the 1st and 2nd order accurate
schemes have been employed in order to produce the power curve.
The 2nd order accurate scheme is found to produce a small stan-
dard error and the power curves obtained by employing the SST
Transitional model are consistent with the results obtained for the
full 2D model found in the literature.
Evaluating these methods for a full 3D model is a very important
future research area and it is being investigated by the authors.
Acknowledgements
Khaled M. Almohammadi would like to express his gratitude to
Taibah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for supporting him to
perform his PhD study.
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R*: convergence condition
Nomenclature UN: upstream wind velocity [m/s]
v2: wall normal velocity scale
c: chord length [m] a: constant
cp: power coefficient [Power/0.5rAV3] 3: turbulence dissipation [m2/s2]
cp: extrapolated power coefficient. k: kinetic energy [m2/s2]
f : elliptic relaxation factor l: tip speed ratio (TSR)
h: characteristic mesh size [1/mesh size]2 u: specific dissipation rate [m2/s3]