A Numerical Study on a Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine with Inclined Arms

This work focuses on a particular type of vertical-axis wind turbine, in which a number of inclined arms with airfoil-shaped cross-sections are mounted to connect the principal blades to their hub. While the majority of the known studies on verticalaxis turbines is devoted to the role of principal blades, in most of the cases without taking into account other parts of the wind turbine, the objective of this work is to investigate the effect of uncommon arm geometries, such as the inclined arms.The inclined arms are known to have a potentially beneficial role in the power extraction from the wind current but, due to the complexity of the phenomena, the investigation on aerodynamics of this type of turbine is often impossible through analytical models, such as blade-element momentum theory. It turns out that adequate studies can only be carried out by wind tunnel experiments or CFD simulations. Thiswork presents a methodical CFD study on howinclined arms can be used on a selectedwind turbine configuration to harvest additional power fromthe wind.The turbine configuration, geometry, and some fundamental definitions are introduced first. Then an in-depth CFD analysis is presented and discussed.