Effect of struts and central tower on aerodynamics and aeroacoustics of vertical axis wind turbines using mid-fidelity and high-fidelity methods

This study investigates the impact of struts and a central tower on the aerodynamics and aeroacoustics of Darrieus Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) at chord-based Reynolds numbers of 8.12 × 104. A 2-bladed H-Darrieus VAWT is used, featuring a 1.5m diameter, a solidity of 0.1 and a blade cross-section of symmetrical NACA 0021. The turbine design is kept simple and straight-bladed which is essential for isolating and analyzing the specific effects of struts and a tower. The high-fidelity Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) in PowerFLOW 6-2020 and the mid-fidelity Lifting Line Free Vortex Wake (LLFVW) method in QBlade 2.0 are employed, with the mid-fidelity method providing a faster analytical tool for insights into the turbine performance. Firstly, both the LLFVW (mid-fidelity) and LBM (high-fidelity) methods effectively capture the general trends observed in VAWT power performance. However, the former predicts mean thrust values that are approximately 10% higher, and mean torque values that are approximately 19% higher, in comparison to the latter. Subsequently, the former predicts lower streamwise wake velocities relative to those predicted by the latter. These differences increase in configurations that include struts and a tower (to 30% - 31%). Secondly, the presence of struts and a tower leads to a reduction in both mean power (by 15% to 55%) and thrust (by 3% to 3.6%), with a further small decrease observed when doubling the tower diameter (power and thrust both by 0.5% to 3%). The struts predominantly affect the spanwise distribution of blade loading, while the tower impacts the azimuthal variation of blade loading. Additionally, the addition of struts and a tower reduces low-frequency noise (50-200 Hz) while increasing high-frequency noise (> 300 Hz). The observed decrease in mean blade loading results in reduced low-frequency noise, while the increase in high-frequency noise is ascribed to the increased intensity of BWI/BVI leading to higher unsteady loading fluctuations on blades.