A Multi-prong Study on Aerodynamic Characteristics of Archimedes Spiral-type Wind Turbine Blade

This research describes aerodynamic characteristics of small-scale wind turbine blade, called Archimedes spiral wind turbine blade. Numerical approaches on the prediction of aerodynamic performance of the blade have been conducted. Both steady and unsteady state numerical simulations using ANSYS CFX are performed on the several cases of rotating speeds. Large scale tip vortex is captured and graphically addressed in this research. In order to proving the results of numerical simulation, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) has been used to measure the aerodynamic characteristics of the Archimedes spiral wind turbine blade. Detail velocity vector fields around the blade are obtained and compared to those predicted by the steady and unsteady state CFD analysis. Mean velocity profiles are in a good agreement between experiment and unsteady state CFD analysis, the trajectory and magnitude of tip vortices generated by the blade are identified from the PIV results.