Effect of Shroud Components on the Performance of a Small Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Mechanical Power Engineering- Faculty of Engineering - Minia University - Mina - Egypt

2 Department of Mechanical Power Engineering-Faculty of Engineering-Minia University-Minia-Egypt

Abstract

A small horizontal axis wind turbine has been tested experimentally to show the influence of shroud components on the turbine's overall performance. The reference case was the bare wind turbine. The different parts of the shroud are connecting ring, inducer, diffuser, and lens. The maximum power coefficient (Cp) of the used bare HAWT is 0.1969 (1st case). When the connecting ring was attached to the reference case (2nd case), the maximum Cp decreased to 0.1695. In the (3rd case) an inducer is attached to the connecting ring, maximum Cp increased to 0.2213, about 11% higher than the bare wind turbine. When adding a diffuser part to the inducer and the connecting ring (4th case), the performance increased to 0.347, which is improved by 36.2% compared to the third case and 43.26% to a bare wind turbine. In the (5th case) a lens was added to the diffuser outlet to construct a full shroud. For this construction, the best performance is obtained at Cp of 0.35. This case improved the performance by 43.74%, more than the bare turbine. To reduce the construction cost, in the (6th case), the inlet inducer is removed and the connecting ring with flanged diffuser assembly is examined, under the same working condition, the performance is reduced to 0.308. Although the performance, in this case, was lower than the case of a full shroud, it improved the performance over the bare turbine and the case of inducer-connecting ring assembly by 36.07% and 44.97% respectively.

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