An experimental study on improvement of Savonius rotor performance

For solving the world energy problem and the bad effect of conventional sources of energy on environment, great attention allover the world is paid towards the use of renewable energy sources. Special interest is paid towards wind energy because of its competitively. Savonius rotor is a vertical axis wind turbine which is characterized as cheaper, simpler in construction and low speed turbine. This makes it suitable for generating mechanical energy in many countries especially in Egypt. In this work different geometries of Savonius wind turbine are experimentally studied in order to determine the most effective operation parameters. It was found that, the two blades rotor is more efficient than three and four ones. The rotor with end plates gives higher efficiency than those of without end plates. Double stage rotors have higher performance compared to single stage rotors. The rotors without overlap ratio (b) are better in operation than those with overlap. The results show also that the power coefficient increases with rising the aspect ratio (a). The conclusions from the measurements of the static torque for each rotor at different wind speeds verify the above summarized results of this work. (C)2012 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.