Investigation of similarity or dissimilarity in aerodynamic performance and noise pollution of H-Darrieus wind turbines

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of wind speed on the non-dimensional curve of the power coefficient-tip speed ratio and noise pollution of an H-Darrieus wind turbine. The Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) and the SST-kω turbulence model are applied to simulate flow around the turbine at four wind speeds and four tip speed ratios. The results show no similarity in the aerodynamic performance when wind speed changes. Additionally, noise pollution is investigated using the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) equations at the tip speed ratio of 2.64 for all wind speeds. The directivity is calculated at distances of 4 m and 16 m and angle positions of 0o to 360o. It is observed that although the noise behavior is more similar to the monopole form, the angle position has a considerable effect on the noise received by observers. Increasing the wind speed significantly amplifies the wind turbine noise, but there is no similarity in the directivity profiles obtained for all wind speeds. Finally, the frequency distribution is investigated, and the results show that the highest frequency is at blade passing frequency in all cases. However, the results based on rotor frequencies show no similarity in the shape of frequency distribution.