Abstract
The world’s population is going to surge past 10 billion by 2050. In order to cater to the energy demand of the ever-increasing posterity, scientists across the globe are working to harness power from renewable sources of energy. In pursuit of studying alternative energy sources, Savonius-style turbines (SSTs) have gained increased attention in the past few years. However, considering the low operational efficiency, design aspects of these turbines need to be improved. In this study, experimental investigations have been carried out using two designs of SSTs namely classical SST and elliptic shaped SST. The study has been carried out using an experimental setup that could produce a low head of < 1 m and water flow velocity within a range of 0.4 m/s to 1.2 m/s; the velocities at which perennial rivers flow. This study presents the comparison and analysis of the coefficients of power and torque measurements at various tip speed ratios. The study shows that there exists a local maximum when coefficient of performance is plotted with TSR. Out of the two profiles studied here, elliptic shaped SST generated a coefficient of power of 0.392 and a coefficient of torque of 0.538, when the water head was set at 1 m and flow velocity of 0.47 m/s. Experimental data reported here exhibit a gain of 16 % using an elliptic shaped SST over classical design.
