Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2019, Vol. 11(1) 1–16
Ó The Author(s) 2019
Analysis and implementation of a DOI: 10.1177/1687814019825709
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
drag-type vertical-axis wind turbine for
small distributed wind energy systems

Zheng Li1 , Ruihua Han1, Peifeng Gao1 and Caisheng Wang2

Abstract
This article investigates a drag-type vertical-axis wind turbine that is targeted for small-scale wind energy system applica-
tions. Based on aerodynamics models, the three-dimensional simulation studies have been carried out to obtain the
force distributions along blades and eventually the torque and power coefficients for different vertical-axis wind turbine
configurations. An optimal vertical-axis wind turbine configuration is chosen based on the comparative analysis, and a
2 kW prototype system has been implemented based on the design. The effectiveness of the three-dimensional models
and simulation results has been verified by the measured data from the actual vertical-axis wind turbine system. The
wake impacts to the vertical-axis wind turbine caused by nearby objects are also analyzed. The simulation results and
the actual operation experiences show that the proposed system has the characteristics of low cut-in speed, high power
density, and robustness to adjacent objects (such as buildings and other wind turbines), which make it suitable for small-
scale wind energy systems in populated areas including urban environment.

Keywords
Computational fluid dynamics, power density, small wind energy system, vertical-axis wind turbine

Date received: 30 May 2018; accepted: 2 January 2019

Handling Editor: Jiin-Yuh Jang

Introduction require high-voltage transmission lines to transmit the

Wind energy has been growing at a phenomenal speed
over the past decade. The average annual growth rate
of global cumulative wind power capacity has been
above 20% since the end of 2008,1 achieving a total
wind generation capacity over 435 GW worldwide by
the end of 2015.2 The vast majority of the growth is
contributed by the installation of large, centralized
wind farms with large-size wind turbines. On the one
hand, there has been a trend in developing large wind
turbines. An 8 MW wind turbine with blades over 79-m
long has been tested on a tower of 220-m tall since the
beginning of 2014.3 However, on the other hand, there
are always great challenges and issues associated with
the development of large wind energy systems. For
instance, large, centralized wind farms are normally
installed at less populated or remote areas and typically
renewable energy to load centers while the transmission
rights of way have become more difficult and expensive
to obtain. There have been concerns over big rotating
blades for threatening local wildlife and the noise pollu-
tion generated by them.4 Moreover, to avoid the wake
impacts caused by adjacent turbines, large horizontal-
axis wind turbines (HAWTs) are normally separated
1
School of Electrical Engineering, Hebei University of Science and
Technology, Shijiazhuang, China
2
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wayne State
University, Detroit, MI, USA
Corresponding author:
Zheng Li, School of Electrical Engineering, Hebei University of Science
and Technology, Shijiazhuang 050018, Hebei, China.
Email: Lzhfgd@163.com

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2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
six to eight turbine diameters, which results in the inef-
ficiency of land use and a low power density, that is,
the amount of power generated over the area of land
used.5 The typical power densities of large wind farms
can be as low as 2–3 W/m2.5
In addition to large wind turbines, small wind tur-
bines consist of another important sector of wind
energy. Small wind energy systems are normally
referred as the wind systems that generate up to 50 kW
or have an equivalent swept area up to 200 m2.1,4 These
small wind energy systems can be installed close to cus-
tomers and operated as distributed generation (DG)
sources to supply power for individual homes, build-
ings, small business, telecommunication stations, and
remote areas including islands.1,6,7 In addition to being
clean and renewable, grid-connected distributed wind
energy systems can also bring other benefits that DG
sources can bring in general such as grid reinforcement;
system upgrade deferral or elimination, reducing power
losses and on-peak operating costs; improving voltage
profiles and load factors; and improving system integ-
rity, reliability, and efficiency.8 Distributed wind energy
systems can also compensate certain issues that large,
centralized wind farms have. Moreover, small wind
energy systems are easier to build and quieter in opera-
tion. The applications of small wind energy systems
have continued to grow in wind energy market. By the
end of 2014, at least 945,000 small wind turbines have
been installed worldwide with a total cumulative gener-
ation capacity over 830 MW.7
According to the position of driving shaft with
respect to the ground, there are two types of wind tur-
bine: HAWT and vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT).9–
11
Almost all large wind turbines are HAWTs, while
VAWTs are normally used for small wind energy sys-
tems. VAWTs can catch wind from any direction and
normally have a low cut-in speed. The base of a VAWT
does not need to withstand strong torque as that would
happen in HAWTs. Slower tip speed makes VAWT
quieter and safer to wildlife. All of these features make
VAWTs suitable for small distributed wind generation
systems.
VAWTs have been long time studied ever since it
was first introduced, especially in recent years.12–18
Three different airfoil profiles were studied and com-
pared for small-scale wind turbines.12 A Savonius tur-
bine (i.e. a drag-type VAWT) was studied by the
standard k-e and the shear stress transport (SST) k-v
models,13 where the static torque coefficient, dynamic
torque coefficient, and power coefficient values were
calculated and compared. New combined-type VAWTs
were proposed to combine the features of Savonius
(drag type) and Darrieus (lift type) turbines to improve
the turbine performance.14,15
Arpino et al.16 simulated the power coefficients for
an innovative Darrieus-style VAWT with auxiliary
straight blades in a recent study. Based on the simula-
tion and experimental results, they claimed that the
most suitable model for the performance simulation
study of the micro turbine under investigation is the
Spalart–Allmaras model. Kludzinska et al.17 designed
an innovative Savonius wind turbine, which is equipped
with a stator to direct the wind flow. Kumar et al.18
carried out a numerical investigation of a modified
Bach-type VAWT. The performance parameters such
as power coefficient and torque coefficient were calcu-
lated through simulation studies. The results were com-
pared with the available experimental data. The results
show that an improved performance of around 37% in
power coefficient was observed for the modified Bach-
type VAWT over a simple Savonius rotor.
This article investigates a Senegal drag-type VAWT
under different configurations to find an optimal
design that has the characteristics of low cut-in speed,
high power density, and robustness to adjacent objects.
The proposed wind turbine has the following advan-
tages: the starting speed of the wind turbine is 1.2 m/s,
which is better than the majority of VAWTs (above
2 m/s).19,20 When the wind turbine reaches its rated
power, the rated speed of the wind turbine is about
120 r/min, which results in low noise.20 Moreover, a
2 kW prototype system has been developed based on the
design. The remainder of the article is organized as fol-
lows: the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of
the proposed VAWT turbine is given in section
‘‘Modeling of drag-type VAWT.’’ In section ‘‘Turbine
structure design and selection,’’ the corresponding three-
dimensional (3D) simulation studies have been carried
out and compared for the VAWT under different config-
urations to choose the optimal design. The effectiveness
of the 3D models and simulation results is verified in sec-
tion ‘‘Simulation results and experimental studies’’ by the
measured data from the actual prototype VAWT system.
The wake effects of the developed VAWT system are
analyzed in section ‘‘Wake stream influence on the tur-
bine.’’ Section ‘‘Conclusion’’ summarize the work and
concludes the article. The conclusion is that the proposed
system is suitable for small-scale wind energy systems in
populated areas including urban environments.
Modeling of drag-type VAWT
Characteristic parameters
The performance analysis of a VAWT is different from
an HAWT, which can be started by obtaining the tor-
que coefficient (Ct) and the power coefficient (Cp),
defined in equations (1) and (2) as follows19
T
Ct = ð1Þ
1 2
2 rDAV
Li et al. 3

Tv
Cp = ð2Þ
1 3 ∂r ∂(ru) ∂(rv) ∂(rw)
2 rAV + + + =0 ð8Þ
∂t ∂x ∂y ∂z
where T is the torque of the rotor, r is the air density,
D is the diameter of the blades, A is the swept area of which can also be expressed as
the blades, V is the free stream velocity of wind, and v
is the rotating speed of the rotor. ∂r !
+ r  (r V ) = 0 ð9Þ
Cp refers to the conversion efficiency of the shaft ∂t
power obtained from the wind energy, which is the where V is the speed vector, and u, v, and w are the
ratio of the turbine shaft power of the wind turbine to representations of V along the x, y, and z directions,
the kinetic energy of the wind. Assuming that the velo- respectively; and r is the symbol of divergence. r is the
city of the air fluid at time t is V, the length is L, the air fluid density.
mass is then m = rLAL , AL is the cross-sectional area of
the fluid. Since V = L=t, Ew = (1=2)mV 2 , the mechani- 2. The law of momentum conservation equation. If
cal energy of the fluid can be expressed as there is no external force or the sum of external
forces is 0, the overall momentum maintains the
1
Ew = rtAw V 2 ð3Þ original value. The expression is given as follows
2
The shaft power of turbine (PT) can be calculated as
∂(ru) ∂(ru2 ) ∂(ruv) ∂(ruw) ∂p
PT = T v ð4Þ + + + =
∂t ∂x ∂y ∂z ∂x
 
The potential wind power (PW) is ∂ ~ ~ ∂u
+ plr v + 2m
∂x ∂x
1      
PW = rAV 3 ð5Þ ∂ ∂v ∂u ∂ ∂u ∂w
2 + m + + m + + rfx
∂y ∂x ∂y ∂z ∂z ∂x
Hence, Cp is the ratio of the shaft power over the ð10Þ
potential wind power.
The Reynolds number is an important factor that ∂(rv) ∂(ruv) ∂(rv2 ) ∂(rvw) ∂p
+ + + =
has great impact on the mechanical efficiency of a ∂t ∂x ∂y ∂z ∂y
  
VAWT. This parameter can be calculated as follows ∂ ∂v ∂u
+ m +
∂x ∂x ∂y
rV1 d     
Re = ð6Þ ∂ ~ ∂v ∂ ∂w ∂v
m + lr ~
v + 2m + m + + rfy
∂y ∂y ∂z ∂y ∂z
where d is the characteristic length of the turbine, which ð11Þ
is the diameter of the wind turbine, and m is the viscos-
ity coefficient. V1 is the wind speed in the flow field. ∂(rw) ∂(ruw) ∂(rvw) ∂(rw2 ) ∂p
+ + + =
Tip speed ratio (TSR), defined below, is another ∂t ∂x ∂y ∂z ∂z
  
important parameter, which is used in analyzing wind ∂ ∂u ∂w
+ m +
turbine performance ∂x ∂z ∂x
    
∂ ∂w ∂v ∂ ~ ~ ∂w
Rv + m + + lr v + 2m + rfz
TSR = ð7Þ ∂y ∂y ∂z ∂z ∂z
V
ð12Þ
where R is the blade radius.
In order to achieve turbulence closures, when the where m is the kinematic viscosity coefficient; fx, fy,and
physical model of the study is turbulent, we should add fz are components of external forces, p is the pressure, l
the corresponding control equations. is the second viscosity.

1. The law of mass conservation equation. It is also

known as the continuous equation indicating
that the net mass of the inflow control body in
the unit time is equal to the mass of the control
body itself under the same conditions and can
be expressed as follows
Modeling, meshing, and boundary condition setting
A VAWT system contains blades, a supporting pole, a
generator, a drive shaft, and so on. To focus on the
investigation of fluid–solid coupling and aerodynamic
3D model development of the blades, the permanent
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 1. Senegal-type turbine in flow field.
Figure 2. Wind turbine flow field boundary condition.
magnet generator and the drive shaft are integrated
together. Figure 1 shows the Senegal-type turbine in
the flow field which is simulated using ANSYS 3D
CFX software. To simulate the real environment, the
flow field of turbine model is divided into a stationary
Figure 3. Meshing of the Senegal-type turbine.
domain and a rotating domain. These domains are set
to simulate the wind turbine working environment. The
static domain is used to simulate a wide area of wind
turbine farm environment; the rotating domain is for
simulating the field with wind turbine blades. The
height of wind turbine is set to 2 m; the inner diameter
of blade is 1.7 m and the outer diameter is 1.9 m; the
radius of the blade’s semicircular arc portion is 0.18 m;
the plate length is 0.6 m; and the height of the pole is
3 m. In order to reduce the influence due to the flow
field boundary upon the flow field, the static domain is
set at a length of 7 m, a width of 4 m, and a height of
5 m (Figure 2).
In the fluid field calculation, the mesh of the 3D
model needs to be determined first. The fluid in the
space is connected by points for calculation. In this
work, the mesh generation is done automatically by the
software (ANSYS), which is typical for most CFD
studies. In this article, an automatic mesh generation
method is adopted. The advantage of this method is
that it has good performance in some irregular shapes.
The mesh is relatively dense and has a tetrahedral
shape. The total number of nodes ranges around 150
thousands, resulting in 780,000 mesh units. The first
grid point is set in the logarithmic region; hence, the
y + value cannot be too small, which is set to 30. In this
article, an adaptive method is used in this article. The
essence of this method is to re-divide the grid according
to the change of the stress gradient in the place where
the stress gradient is large. As shown in Figure 3, the
mesh becomes denser at the wind turbine in order to
improve the calculation accuracy. Figure 3(a) repre-
sents the interface mesh and Figure 3(b) is the blade
mesh, Figure 3(c) shows the mesh details of a single
blade. In order to verify the accuracy of the simulation
results, some verification of the model have been done
in the previous studies.21 For example, the influence of
the relative size of the static and rotating domains on
Li et al.
Figure 4. 3D model of the Senegal-type turbine.
the performance of the wind turbine, the influence of
the position of the wind turbine in the fluid field and
the mesh generation method on the performance of the
wind turbine, and so on. This effect is mainly reflected
in the coefficient of wind energy utilization and the
coefficient of torque. The grid convergence verification
and time step was also made in the previous studies,
and the results show that when the grid number reaches
over 480,000 and the steps are within 500, the calcula-
tion results are accurate. Due to the lack of actual data,
the maximum wind energy utilization coefficient is
sought by repeated change of model and repeated simu-
lation studies. The accuracy is supported by these
verifications.
One layer versus two layers
Figure 4 shows the basic structure of the one-layer wind
turbine. Each layer of wind turbine consists of three
blades, each of which is placed 120° apart. The pro-
posed wind turbine is composed of two layers of wind
blades. In order to simplify analysis, a wind turbine
configuration of one layer with three evenly placed
blades is investigated first. The Senegal-type turbine is
simulated under a constant wind speed with different
TSR (i.e. 0.141–0.78). The wind direction is shown in
Figure 4, and the rotating direction of blades is clock-
wise from top view.
Figure 5 shows the torque coefficient of a one-layer
turbine in a whole rotating cycle. The TSR is set to
0.37, and the wind speed is 6.7 m/s. The initial position
of the blade is shown in Figure 4. It can be seen from
Figure 5 that the component forces of the three blades
constitute the resultant force of the turbine, which has
a rotation period of 120°.
Figure 6 shows the torque coefficient curves of the
one-layer design and the optimal model with two-layer
design that will be discussed later. The torque coeffi-
cient presented here is the overall coefficient for all the
blades. It is clearly shown in the figure that the curve of
the one-layer design repeats every 120° since the three
blades are evenly placed in space. It also can be seen
5
Figure 5. Torque coefficient of one layer of blades with wind
speed 6.7 m/s.
Figure 6. Torque coefficient of two layers of blades with wind
speed 6.7 m/s.
from the figure that the one-layer design has very large,
undesirable torque ripples/variations. Since the two-
layer design with six blades can provide a much better
torque output as shown in Figure 6, it (i.e. the pro-
posed design) will be taken as the main structure for
the wind turbine studied in this article. Detailed discus-
sions on the two-layer design will be given in the fol-
lowing sections.
Boundary condition and simulation parameters
Based on the compressible continuous equation and
Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equation, the
numerical calculation of wind turbine is carried out
using ANSYS CFX. The angular velocity of the rota-
tion domain is set up. The k-e model is chosen as the
model of turbulence. The wind turbine flow field con-
sists two parts: the rotating domain and the static
domain. The rotating domain is a flow field formed by
the rotation of the wind turbine, which includes the
wind blades, generator, and the rotating shaft. The sta-
tic domain is the area where the air flows, including the
supporting pole and the flowing air, which simulates
the speed and direction of the incoming flow. The fol-
lowing inlet boundary condition is considered. Based
on the real measurement data in the urban
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 1. Simulation parameters.

Reynolds number Turbulence model Iterations No. of meshes Residual target

6.0E + 5 Standard k-e model 150 steps 10 million 1.0E–4

Figure 7. Curves of power coefficient versus TSR under

different Reynolds numbers.

environment of Detroit, the following wind speeds are

used in the simulation studies (4.9–18 m/s). In the inlet
setting of boundary conditions, the wind is set to turbu-
lent and the turbulent intensity is moderate. The outlet Figure 8. Four types of blade structures: (a) closed plates,
pressure is set to 0. The top and bottom boundary con- (b) adding baffle plates, (c) short plates, and (d) long plates.
ditions are set to wall, and the two sides of the air
domain are set to symmetry. The semi implicit method
for pressure linked equations (SIMPLE) algorithm is
chosen as the method of calculating the flow field,
which takes into account the joint action of high-order
solution and the upwind mode to achieve rapid conver-
gence while ensuring the accuracy. The rotating field
speed is set up with different values based on the differ-
ent TSR (0.14–0.78 used in this study). Reynolds num-
ber (Re) also has an important effect on the accuracy
of the results. In order to simulate the operation of the
solid model more accurately, Re is calculated according
to the actual environmental flow field. Other simula-
tion parameters are summarized in Table 1.
Figure 7 shows the curves of Cp versus TSR under
different wind speeds, where the Res are set at 490,000 Figure 9. Four top–bottom layer positioning schemes: (a) 0°,
(Cp1), 670,000 (Cp2), and 890,000 (Cp3), respectively. It (b) 20°, (c) 40°, and (d) 60°.
can be found from Figure 7 that the wind energy utili-
zation rate first increases and then decreases with the
increase of TSR. The maximum value occurs when the of plates (short plates in Figure 8(c)), and long plates,
TSR is between 0.5 and 0.6. respectively. Figure 9 shows four different positioning
styles of two layers of blades. The top layer of blades is
positioned above the bottom layer by a certain degree,
Turbine structure design and selection as shown in Figure 9. The angle difference between the
Different two-layer designs are investigated to choose two layers is 0° in the first scheme, while the angles are
an optimal design for improved torque and power per- 20°, 40°, and 60° for the second, the third, and the
formance. The turbine structure designs shown in fourth scheme, respectively. Based on the boundary
Figures 8 and 9 show four blade structures namely, the conditions of the turbines, the cyclical data of the tur-
closed plates, adding baffles inside, halving the length bines’ torques are computed for the optimal designs.
Li et al.
Figure 10. 2D force distribution of the closed-plates design.
Figure 11. 2D force distribution of the adding baffles design.
Figure 12. 2D force distribution of the short-plates design.
Comparison of different blade designs
Figures 10–13 show the two-dimensional (2D) force
distribution on the two layers of turbines at a certain
position (rotation angle) for the four types of blade
structures shown in Figure 8. The top sub-figure in
each figure shows the force distribution of the three
blades in the top layer; the bottom one shows the force
distribution of the three blades in the bottom layer. In
these studies, the rotation angle is set at 70° because the
largest torque coefficient (Ct) appears at this situation
in one cycle, as shown in Figure 14. Figure 10 shows
the force distribution of the closed plate blade structure
7
in Figure 8(a). The right side of the top layer blades has
a greater pressure, and the wind energy cannot be con-
verted efficiently for driving. The whole pressure is con-
centrated on blades and against the steady turning of
the turbine.
Figure 11 shows the force distribution for the adding
baffles design in Figure 8(b). Compared with Figure 10,
due to the blocking effects on the air flowing through
the adding baffle plates, the force on the lower part of
the top-left blade is significantly less than that of the
design in Figure 10. For the same reason, the pressure
exerted on the windward side of the blade is larger. This
design of turbine has a greater utilization of the wind
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 13. 2D force distribution of the long-plates design.
Figure 14. The torque coefficient curves in one full cycle for
the four blade structures.
power near the blades, but the disadvantage lies in that
it is easy to form a vortex due to the non-conducive fea-
ture for the wind flow, which makes it against capturing
wind energy in a dynamic process.
Figure 12 shows the result of the scheme of halving
the length of the plates. Compared with Figure 10, the
pressure on the right side of the top layer blades is simi-
lar, but the pressure is also larger on the bottom layer
of turbine due to the lack of plate barrier effects by the
blades. Generally, the torque is smaller than the scheme
shown in Figure 10.
Figure 13 shows the force distribution for the scheme
by using long plate blades (Figure 8(d)). The top blades
have bigger resistance in producing torque, but the bot-
tom ones are in the better position. This structure can
produce a fairly good torque as a whole.
It can be observed from Figures 10–13 that the pro-
posed blade structure of long plates in Figure 8(d) can
produce the highest torque. To better illustrate this, the
torque coefficients of the four blade schemes during
one cycle are shown in Figure 14. It can be seen that
the proposed scheme of long plates has the best perfor-
mance in terms of torque coefficient, while the scheme
of adding baffles scheme shows the smallest torque
value.
Figure 15. Comparison of the four placement schemes of top
and bottom blade layers.
Comparisons of different top–bottom positioning
schemes
Figure 15 shows the torque coefficient curves of the
four positioning schemes between the top and bottom
layers of blades. The angle a between the top and the
bottom layers is changed from 0° (Scheme 1), 20°
(Scheme 2), 40° (Scheme 3), and 60° (Scheme 4, the
proposed one), respectively. When the offset angle a is
greater than 60°, since there are three blades evenly
placed in each layer, the equivalent offset angle is
(120°–a). Thus, the maximum positioning offset angle
between the top and bottom layers is 60°. The curves in
Figure 14 were obtained under the condition when
TSR is 0.57 and wind speed is 6.7 m/s.
It can be seen in Figure 15 that the torque coefficient
curve of Scheme 1 has a period of 120° in terms of
angle while the curve of Scheme 4 has a period of 60°.
Scheme 1 has the highest peak value of Ct, but the
blades are subject to the strongest compressive force
and the biggest force ripples, which accelerate the pro-
cess of material fatigue. There are even some negative
values of Ct in some positions for Scheme 1. To achieve
a more stable and smoother output torque, Scheme 4 is
chosen for implementing the VAWT.
Li et al. 9

Figure 16. Wind velocity vector distribution of the turbine model.

Simulation results and experimental

studies
3D simulation studies have also been carried out to
investigate the performance of the proposed VAWT.
The overall output power curve at different wind
speeds is obtained via the simulation studies. The simu-
lation result is compared with the actual measured data
(Figure 26) of a 2-kW VAWT that was built and
installed on the roof of the Engineering Technology
Building in Wayne State University (WSU) based on
the design.

Flow field analysis
In this simulation, the wind velocity vector is set along
the axis of positive direction. The simulation is done
under the situation when wind speed is 6.7 m/s and
TSR is 0.57.
According to the wind velocity vector distribution in
Figure 16, the wind energy loss is reduced due to the
top and bottom block plates of blades. Within the mid-
dle section of the rotating field between the two layers,
the wind speed slows down owing to the turbulence.
The turbulence is in clockwise direction and weakens
the pressure of wind to the blades and also reduces the
turbine’s efficiency. Meanwhile, from the upper section
of blades in the figure, the air flow passes between the
plate and semi-cup, accelerating the flowing of the flow
Figure 17. Wind velocity contour of the top layer of blades.
field. This design improves the utilization of wind
energy by reducing the impact of turbulence.
For a more intuitive understanding of wind speed
on the turbine, in the CFD post-processing, the velocity
contours are shown in Figures 17 and 18.
When the wind blows, the semi-disk side of the blade
suffers a greater resistance. The blades are exerted with
the resistance difference of the windward side to imple-
ment rotation motion.21–24 Disproportion of airstream
will produce the thrust force to move around the
blades. In Figure 16, the thrust force of blades is smaller
owing to the slower wind speed around the turbine,
10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 18. Wind velocity contour of the bottom layer of Figure 19. Velocity flow distribution of the top blades.
blades.

while the middle section of blades loses part of wind

energy on account of high wind speed. The wind fields
of the bottom layer blades, marked as 1, 2, and 3 in
Figure 18, are more complicated than those of Figure
17. Because of the obstruction effect caused by the sup-
porting pole, the wind speed around blade 3 is smaller.
The 2D and 3D velocity contours can reflect the wind
field around the wind turbine. The 2D velocity contour
selects a section of the wind field, which is convenient
to study the wake and the wind velocity of the wind tur-
bine at a certain height. The 3D velocity contour can
better reflect the details of the wind inside the wind tur-
bine and the overall pressure of the wind turbine. Figure 20. Velocity flow distribution of the bottom blades.
Comparing the 3D and 2D results, it can be seen that
the wind speed inside the wind wheel is obviously disor-
dered and lower than the top and bottom, and the wind because of the obstructive plate, which leads to the
speed gradually recovered after two diameters of the wind velocity beneath the plate greater than on top of
turbine on the downstream side. Figures 19 and 20 the plate. According to Bernoulli principle, the pressure
show the sectional views of the wind velocity flow dis- beneath the plate is greater than at the top, producing
tributions of the top and bottom layers, respectively. greater power.
It can be seen from Figure 18 that the velocity is
reduced in the vicinity of the blades. Meanwhile, the
streamline in the left side passes through the blade and Analysis of torque coefficient results
goes down, ultimately comes as turbulence before the The torque under a constant wind speed of 6.7 m/s is
blade. The turbulence makes the left blade suffer high- calculated for different TSR values, as given in Table 2.
speed shock impact and reduce the drag effect on the The results of the torque are the average values in one
right blade to improve Cp. In Figure 20, the direction cycle.
of rotation is anti-clockwise. The turbulence appears at Under a constant wind speed of 6.7 m/s, the tor-
the upper left blade and the front of the lower blade que is calculated when the turbine rotates every 10°.

Table 2. Simulation results at the wind speed of 6.7 m/s.

Parameter name of the wind turbine The value of the parameter

TSR 0.14 0.28 0.37 0.47 0.57 0.67 0.78

v (rad/s) 0.77 1.54 2.03 2.56 3.08 3.66 4.23
Torque (Nm) 111.8 101.2 80.4 70.1 60.7 47.2 22.6

TSR: tip speed ratio.

Li et al.
Figure 21. Ct curve of turbine rotation cycle at TSR = 0.57.
The torque coefficient curve over 360° is shown in
Figure 21. The torque coefficient curve has a period
of 120°, and the peak is reached at around 70°.
Figure 22 is the velocity distribution when the tur-
bine rotates 70°, at which the torque coefficient
reaches its peak value.
Wind turbine implementation and experimental
studies
Based on the proposed structure of VAWT given in
Figures 8(d) and 9(d), a 2-kW VAWT has been built on
the roof of the Engineering Technology Building in
WSU, as shown in Figure 23. The characteristic length
(d) of the turbine is 2.494 m. The system has been in full
operation since June 2011. The system has a Davis
Vantage Pro 2 weather station and 16-channel data
acquisition (DAQ) system to measure and store weather
data (wind velocity, temperature, etc.) and various cir-
cuit quantities such as current, voltage, and power from
Figure 22. Velocity vector of the turbine at the rotation position of 70°.
11
the VAWT. A website (http://hres.eng.wayne.edu/) has
been developed to share the real-time data (every min-
ute) of the system with researchers worldwide. The data
can be useful for carrying out research on harvesting
wind energy in urban environments. The DAQ system
for this wind turbine mainly consists a personal com-
puter (PC) with a Texas Instrument (Dallas, Texas)
(TI) PCI-MIO-16xe-10 DAQ card,25 a TI SCB-68 inter-
face box, and voltage and current sensors. The sam-
pling resolution of the PCI card is 16 bit. LEM HAL
100-S hall-effect current transducers are used to mea-
sure the currents. The accuracy of the current transdu-
cer is 6 1%.26 Customized resistive voltage dividers are
used to measure the voltages with an accuracy of
6 1%. We have installed the voltage and current sen-
sors to measure the output voltage and current of each
phase of the permanent magnet synchronous generator
(PMSG) of the wind turbine. The measured current and
voltage values are used to calculate the wind output
power. The overall accuracy of the power measurement
(three-phase) is then about 2.5%.
The actual wind turbine system installed at WSU is
not equipped with TSR control. The wind turbine has
a PMSG. Hence, its output voltage is proportional to
the rotating speed. Figure 24 shows the system dia-
gram, where the output of the wind turbine generator
is rectified into DC to charge a 48 V/48 kWh battery
bank. Since the battery terminal voltage is relatively con-
stant, the output voltage of the wind turbine increases
with the turbine rotating speed when the wind speed
increases as the current increases and the voltage drop
between the battery and the generator output increases.
However, the turbine output voltage as well as the rotat-
ing speed does not change much since the equivalent
12
Figure 23. Prototype of the proposed Senegal VAWT.
resistance between the wind turbine and the battery is
not large. Figure 25 shows the power electronic conver-
ters for the wind turbine. And the power output of the
wind turbine is simulated. The simulation is completed
using ANSYS Workbench and MATLAB. First, the
model of the Senegal wind turbine was built using
ANSYS Workbench, and the torque results at different
Figure 24. The schematic diagram of the wind turbine system at WSU.
Advances in Mechanical Engineering
wind speeds were calculated. The results were imported
to the PMSG model in MATLAB, and the output vol-
tage and power were obtained by torque input.
Table 3 shows the data of the practical output power
and the simulation results. The actual measured wind
power at different wind speeds is given in Figure 26.
The simulation results are compared with the measured
data to test the accuracy of output power by predic-
tion, as shown in Figure 26 when TSR is set as 0.57. As
a result, the power density of the proposed VAWT can
be as high as 20 W/m2,27 which is about 7–10 times
higher than that of a typical HAWT.28 From the figure,
it can be seen that the simulated output power curve is
in accordance with the measured data. In general, the
simulated wind power is slightly higher than the mea-
sured data. The deviation is in a reasonable range
which can be caused by certain power losses, such as
the power losses of the bearing and power converter,
and such losses are not included in the simulation
study. Moreover, there are differences between the
simulated flow field and the actual flow field, and the
simulated flow field is ideal. In fact, due to the obsta-
cles of the surrounding buildings and other complex
natural conditions, there can be discrepancies between
the simulation results and the actual results.
Wake stream influence on the turbine
VWATs can be installed on the roof of buildings in an
urban environment. The impact upon the turbine per-
formance caused by nearby buildings and other
Li et al. 13

Table 3. The data of the practical output power and the simulation results.

Parameter name of Power data at different wind speeds

the wind turbine

Wind speed (m/s) 4 4.8 5.8 6.7 7.6 8.95 10.3 11.2 12.1 13.4 14.7 15.7 16.5 17.9
Practical output power (W) 101 92 93 112 160 139 152 161 162 251 400 638 624 910
Simulated output power (W) 65 69 92 123 124 171 188 196 208 294 492 573 750 970

Figure 25. The power electronic converters for the wind

turbine system.

Figure 27. Velocity flow diagram in the wind field.

Figure 26. The output power of the turbine.
turbines need to be studied. Figure 27 shows the simu-
lated velocity flow around the proposed VAWT (see
the top figure). The wind speed is 10 m/s with a TSR of
0.5 for the simulation study. According to the right fig-
ure, the area of upwind is the primary section which
has a great influence on the wind speed behind the
blades.
Figure 28 shows the impact caused by nearby objects
on the implemented turbine, which is about 5 m above
the roof. The top figure shows that the impact caused
by the roof and the objects on the roof is negligible; the
bottom figure shows the effects of obstacle objects such
as a chiller tower near the turbine. It can be seen from
the top figure, the roof has less influence on the turbine;
and according to the bottom figure, when there is an
obstacle in front of the turbine, the wind turbine flow
field can be influenced, thereby reducing the power of
the turbine.
Through the calculation and experiments, in the
workbench post-processing 3D graphics, the result
shows in Table 4 that when the wind speed is around
10 m/s while the TSR is 0.57, the length of the turbine’s
wake effect is roughly around 6 m, which is about two-
diameter distance between the centers of two VAWTs
in any direction. This distance is much shorter than the
typical placement distance between two HAWTs, which
is six to eight times of the turbine diameter. This inter-
esting feature of VAWT enables the possibility of devel-
oping a hybrid wind farm consisting of HAWTs and
VAWTs for better wind energy utilization and higher
power density.
14 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 28. Obstacle impact of buildings.

Table 4. Torque at the wind speed of 10 m/s with and without the obstacle.

Without the Obstacle half-diameter Obstacle one-diameter Obstacle two-diameter

obstacle distance away from turbine distance away from turbine distance away from turbine

Torque (N m) 125 61 95 119

Cp 0.134 0.024 0.078 0.13

Conclusion models and simulation results has been verified by the

A CFD 3D model of a drag-type VAWT has been
developed in the article. The developed model has been
used to investigate the impact of design parameters on
the turbine performance. Four different blade struc-
tures and four positioning schemes of the two layers of
blades have been studied to choose an optimal design.
A 2 kW prototype system has been implemented based
on the optimal design. The effectiveness of the 3D
measured data from the actual VAWT system that has
been in operation since 2011. The wake effects acting
on the VAWT caused by nearby objects have been also
investigated. The simulation results show that the pro-
posed VAWT has a small wake loss if the turbine pla-
cement distance is over two turbine diameters. The
actual operation experiences also show that the pro-
posed system has the characteristics of low cut-in
speed, omni-directional wind energy capture, and
Li et al.
robustness to adjacent objects (such as buildings and
other wind turbines), which make it suitable for small-
scale wind energy systems in populated areas including
urban environments.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the help from Kelso Energy Ltd for
implementing the vertical wind turbine system on the roof of
the Engineering Building at Wayne State University.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This work is supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (grant nos.: 51577048,
51877070, and 51637001), the Natural Science Foundation of
Hebei Province of China (grant no.: E2018208155), the
Overseas Students Science and Technology Activities
Funding Project of Hebei Province (grant no.: C2015003044),
the Hebei Industrial Technology Research Institute of
Additive Manufacturing (Hebei University of Science and
Technology) open projects funding, the National Engineering
Laboratory of Energy-saving Motor & Control Technique,
Anhui University (grant no.: KFKT201804), and the Key
Project of Science and Technology Research in Hebei
Provincial Colleges and Universities (grant no.: ZD2018228).
The work of C.W. was supported in part by the National
Science Foundation of USA under grant no. ECCS-1508910.
ORCID iD
Zheng Li https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2383-7607
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