Numerical Study of the Application of DBD Plasma Actuators on a Vertical Axis WInd Turbine

Numerical study performed to investigate the effectiveness of DBD plasma actuators in enhancing the aerodynamic performances of vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) by mitigating the phenomenon of dynamic stall. After validating the implementation of the Shyy model for DBD discharges in ANSYS Fluent, the research continued with a 2D model of a VAWT with NACA0024 profiles. The results obtained showed that the actuators are more effective at low wind speeds, allowing an increase in generated power of almost 60%. However, the most interesting result was the increase in 10% of the power output for a wind speed of 15 m/s, a condition in which the actuators were strongly limited. The positioning of the actuators was found to be crucial, as demonstrated by the poor results obtained by placing the actuators at the leading edge.