Numerical Investigation of Helical Savonius Wind Rotor Performance with a Novel Deflector Design

For human welfare, electrical power is necessary. The wind known to be a sustainable and clean energy source has whetted extensive interest over decades. As an energy converter, Savonius vertical axis wind rotor has the advantage of being suitable for particular applications owing to its lower cost and independency on wind direction. From this perspective, multiple studies have been conducted to promote its efficiency. This research work emphasizes on the helical Savonius wind rotor (HSWR) which has not been too much exanimate. In a wind tunnel, experimental tests were realized with a 3D printed HSWR. Numerical study was performed via Ansys Fluent 17.0 software. Good accordance was obtained. Boosting, numerically, the efficiency of the HSWR using a novel deflector placed upstream the rotor constitutes the objective of this work. The basic idea is to harvest the incoming wind to the forward blade and to preclude the backward blade. To procure the optimal deflector design, different configurations were proposed through the optimization of the deflection and the arc angles. The optimized deflector improved the HSWR power coefficient with 25% while improving its aerodynamic characteristics.