Abstract
Wind energy is a vital renewable energy source due to its abundance. The Savonius turbine has proven to be a promising vertical axis wind turbine for converting wind kinetic energy to mechanical energy. The performance of two novel Savonius rotor profiles, the sine, and conical profiles, is investigated in the present research. A 3-D numerical simulation of a Savonius turbine is conducted using ANSYS Fluent software. Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes equations (URANS) are used to solve the flow characteristics of the Savonius turbine using the SST k-ω turbulence model. The conventional Savonius turbine is validated by comparing the present numerical results with previous numerical and experimental data. The sine profile reduced the maximum power coefficient by 1.25% compared to the conventional profile. The conical rotor enhanced the maximum power coefficient by 8.6% compared to the conventional profile.
•Two novel Savonius rotor profiles of the sine, and conical profiles are investigated.•Varying the rotor profile enhances the Savonius turbine performance.•Sine Savonius rotor performance is lower than the performance of the semi-circular profile.•Conical profile performance is higher than the performance of theconventional and sine rotors.