By: Dr. Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, April 11, 2022
A group from the Fluid-Structure Interaction Laboratory (LIFE) of the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in Tarragona, led by the researcher Francisco Huera Huarte, has launched a new line of research that seeks to improve the efficiency of wind turbines.
For years, the researcher has been working with a design approach inspired by nature (bio-inspired), specifically based on the movements of birds and fish. Animals take advantage of the elasticity of the body, they are not rigid: “We look at how animals move to imitate them and one of their characteristics is, in the case of fish, the way in which they take advantage of the flexibility of their fins.” Thus, they have taken this concept of bio-inspired propulsion to wind turbines: “Instead of generating power with rigid blades, we wanted to know what would happen if we made the blades flexible, taking advantage of the fluid-structure interaction.”
In this way, they have created a prototype of a vertical axis wind turbine with part of the flexible blades and have put it to the test in a wind tunnel, to see its performance.
The results of the study that they have carried out in this regard indicate that blades that have a certain flexibility increase the efficiency of the turbine by up to 12%. “We have tested different types of flexibility and we have determined what is the range that improves it.” The important thing, he points out, is that this improvement depends solely on the blade, which also does not have to be all of it flexible, only a part: “No motor or any extra element is needed, it depends only on the material and the flow, which is the which causes it to deform in a certain way and increases efficiency.”
At the moment, the research is being carried out in the URV’s wind tunnel and will now be combined with a study in the water tunnel. Tests will soon also be carried out in an open space, on a larger scale and with real wind situations. In future studies, they will establish which part of the blade, which is made of fiber, will have to be flexible in order to guarantee maximum efficiency.
Under the title “Bio-inspired blades with local trailing edge flexibility increase the efficiency of vertical axis wind turbines”, Huera and his colleagues present in the academic journal Energy Reports the technical details of the results obtained so far in this line of research and development. . (Source: URV)
Source NCYT Amazings / URV : https://noticiasdelaciencia.com/art/43953/rendimiento-energetico-de-turbinas-eolicas-y-flexibilidad-de-sus-palas
Photo : URV
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