Testing the Aerodynamic Efficiency of Albatross-Inspired Blades for Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines

Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) have been used for decades as a source of renewable energy, but they come with their fair share of issues, such as their size, cost, and sensitivity to external conditions. In recent years, Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) have been created as an alternative to alleviate some of these issues, however, their aerodynamic performance has yet to surpass the traditional HAWT design. While they can operate over a wider range of conditions than HAWTs, they suffer from lower aerodynamic efficiency. To combat this issue, a blade model that mimics the shape of an albatross wing was considered. Their wing shape is shown to be aerodynamically efficient compared to other bioinspired designs, and a key advantage its performance is not dependent on wing deformation, reducing overall design complexity. Additionally, albatross wing designs feature high lift to drag ratios and low pressure gradients across the wing, both of which contribute to their aerodynamic efficiency. Using SolidWorks for computer-aided design (CAD) and Converge computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for flow simulations, this study developed a bioinspired blade and evaluated its performance against a standard VAWT blade by comparing the differences in power production to determine their overall efficiency. Though the results has shown that the bioinspired design did not outperform the original VAWT design in the peak power coefficient, however, it showcased some interesting results that could open the doors to better bioinspired designs in the future.