A new device is the Aerogenerator from Wind Power Ltd. The design breakthrough of Aerogenerator is its sailwing which utilizes the principle of the Darrieus turbine but with greater stability.
The result is that a much larger turbine can be built with the added advantage that the amount of foundations needed per unit is reduced. This makes the Aerogenerator particularly suitable to positioning offshore where wind resource is greater. In support of the testing of Aerogenerator, Advantage CFD has undertaken a CFD study of a prototype of the device in order to provide a better understanding of its performance under various conditions. A hybrid analysis mesh in excess of 12 million cells was used with hexahedral layers around the sailwings and arms and a refinement region suitable to resolve the wake. The turbine was analysed at different wind speeds, tip speed ratios and scales. A sliding mesh approach was used to accurately capture variations in performance as the device rotated.
