Rotor Design for Diffuser Augmented Wind Turbines

Diffuser augmented wind turbines (DAWTs) can increase mass flow through the rotor substantially, but have often failed to fulfill expectations. We address high-performance diffusers, and investigate the design requirements for a DAWT rotor to efficiently convert the available energy to shaft energy. Several factors can induce wake stall scenarios causing significant energy loss. The causality between these stall mechanisms and earlier DAWT failures is discussed. First, a swirled actuator disk CFD code is validated through comparison with results from a far wake swirl corrected blade-element momentum (BEM) model, and horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) reference results. Then, power efficiency versus thrust is computed with the swirled actuator disk (AD) code for low and high values of tip-speed ratios (TSR), for different centerbodies, and for different spanwise rotor thrust loading distributions. Three different configurations are studied: The bare propeller HAWT, the classical DAWT, and the high-performance multi-element DAWT. In total nearly 400 high-resolution AD runs are generated. These results are presented and discussed. It is concluded that dedicated DAWT rotors can successfully convert the available energy to shaft energy, provided the identified design requirements for swirl and axial loading distributions are satisfied.