PERFORMANCE STUDY OF SMALL-SCALE COUNTER- ROTATING WIND TURBINE WITH VARIATIONS IN ROTOR’S RADIUS, ROTATIONAL SPEED, AND PITCH ANGLE

• Main Author: Refandi Arkananto, Galih
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Teknik (Rekayasa, enjinering dan kegiatan berkaitan)
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/57185
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Indonesia’s energy needs continue to increase, however, Indonesia’s energy sources are still dominated by fossil fuel. Wind Power can be an alternative energy source in Indonesia which has a potential of 60.6 GWp. Constraints faced in the development of Wind Power are high investment and technology for small-scale wind turbines is not yet developed. The counter-rotating wind turbine is a horizontal wind turbine that has 2 rotors rotating in the opposite direction. Studies on counter-rotating wind turbines show that this turbines are more efficient than a conventional wind turbine This study aims to analyze the performance of a small-scale counter-rotating wind turbine by varying the ratio of radius, the ratio of rotational speed, and the pitch angle of the two rotors to obtain the optimum conditions. Rotor has radius of 0.5 m which produces up to 81.36 watts of power. Simulations were carried out using ANSYS Fluent software. In the radius ratio, the simulation results show that as the radius of the front rotor decreases, the power from the rear rotor will increase, but the total power will still decrease. So that the highest power coefficient is obtained when both rotors have the same radius. As for the rotational speed ratio, the highest power coefficient is obtained when the front rotor rotates 1.2 times faster than the rear rotor. The result is an increase in the power coefficient by 3%. Then on the pitch angle difference, the highest power coefficient is obtained when the front rotor pitch angle is -2° and the rear rotor is -3°. As a result, the power coefficient increased by 4.6%.