Experimental Study of the Effect of Blade Shape on the Performance of Darrieus Turbines.

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study on the effects of blade shape on the performance of a straight-bladed hydrokinetic turbine of the Darrieus type. The blade shapes used are RISO A-832, NACA 63-818, and NREL S833. The tested turbine has a diameter of 20 cm, a height of 20 cm, a chord length of 8.3 cm, and three blades. Testing was conducted with variations in flow rates of 0.064  m³/s, 0.008  m³/s , and 0.094  m³/s . The test results show that the maximum efficiency of 20.53 % achieved by the RISO A-832 blade shape is better compared to the NACA 63-818 and NREL S833 blade shapes, which yielded maximum efficiencies of 17.31 % and 14.29 %, respectively, at a flow rate of 0.094  m³/s .