Assessment of Various Diffuser Structures to Improve the Power Production of a Wind Turbine Rotor

Abstract

Numerical simulations were carried out for the flow field around various diffuser type structures to improve the performance of a small wind turbine rotor. The present studies specifically investigate the effect of four different shapes of diffuser, namely flat diffuser, curved diffuser, flat diffuser with inlet shroud, and curved diffuser with inlet shroud on the wind velocity characteristics. Numerical studies were conducted using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. A reasonable agreement between the computed results and available experimental data is obtained. The studies demonstrate that the curved diffuser generates the strongest increment of the wind velocity compared to the other configurations