01. Experimental/Computational Fluid Dynamics

In this paper the flow pattern, pressure, and velocity distributions over several airfoil designs were numerically and experimentally examined. The airfoils examined were the plane airfoil DU 06-W-200, the standardized airfoil for small vertical axis wind turbines, "H rotor", Darrieus turbine, and twelve other innovative bio-inspired designs. The pressure distributions of different case studies were considered using observations obtained from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, and the velocity fields were analyzed using results of particle image velocimetry (PIV) experiments. The bio-inspired cases consist of the six cetacean-inspired airfoil designs, four bird wing-inspired airfoil designs, and two insect wing-inspired airfoil designs. The results show that the cetacean and insect wing-inspired designs cannot improve the aerodynamics performance of the plane airfoil DU 06 W 200 applied in a H-rotor Darrieus turbine. In contrast, the bird wing-inspired airfoil design consisting of the stork wing inspired, albatross wing inspired, 10 degree flapped airfoil, and 5 degree flapped airfoil could improve the lift to drag ratio of the plane airfoil by up to 24.7 %, 19.6 %, 11.9 %, and 8.7 % respectively. The findings of this study could be beneficial in the design and development of power and energy systems with higher efficiency and also sustainable energy systems such as wind energy.