Effect of Chord Radius on Performance of Hydrokinetic Turbine

The energy flow rate per unit flow area of water flow is quite high compared to airflow. This is because of the high density of water compared to that of air. Hence, a hydrokinetic turbine has the potential to extract more power compared to a wind turbine for the same size of a turbine. The Darrius turbine is one of the best options that can be used as a hydrokinetic turbine due to its high coefficient of power. In the present work, the experimental investigations are carried out to study the hydrodynamic performance of three bladed Darrieus turbine with NACA0012. The effect of five different chord radius are investigated with numerical simulations, as a basic profile of the Darrieus turbine vanes. The result indicates that, the optimum performance of the turbine is obtained for CRR = 2 (chord radius = 500 mm) which is 12.5% higher than that of the conventional NACA 0018 profile of turbine vanes. The maximum torque of the turbine is obtained for CRR = 3 (chord radius = 750 mm) which is 6.41% higher than that of the conventional NACA 0018 profile of turbine vanes.