A STUDY ON OPTIMIZATION OF DEFLECTOR PLATE ANGLE IN SAVONIUS HYDROKINETIC TURBINES USING CFD

The paper aims to study and optimize the performance of a Savonius Hydrokinetic turbine using deflector plates in a water channel by positioning the deflector plates in various angles: 90º, 101º, 137º, 44º and 159º and also determines the optimized plate angle through numerous simulations performed using CFD. Modeling and simulations were performed in ANSYS-CFX module considering a k-ε turbulence model considering a free stream velocity having a Reynold's number of 1.32x105 and the necessary boundary conditions were assigned. The post processing presented the various torque values corresponding to different plate angles and tip speed ratios thus enabling to calculate the coefficient of power (Cp). An average deviation of 0.06 was observed from the numerical and experimental results. Therefore the simulation validates the optimized plate angle to be 101º accounting to a maximum Cp of 0.21 as obtained by experimentation in Kailash Golecha et.al, thus indicating an improved performance in the working of the Savonius rotor.