Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378

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Energy Reports
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/egyr

Research paper

Blade shape optimization of Savonius wind turbine using radial based

function model and marine predator algorithm
∗
Huaijie Xia a,b , Song Zhang a,b , Rongyuan Jia a,b , Huadong Qiu a,b,c , Shuhui Xu a,b ,
a
School of Mechanical Engineering, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250353, China
b
Shandong Institute of Mechanical Design and Research, Jinan 250353, China
c
Shandong Shanke Shixin Technology Co., Ltd, Jining 273299, China

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: In order to overcome the problems of low efficiency and poor results of classical optimization methods,
Received 14 July 2022 an efficient, intelligent, and reliable method for optimizing the shape of the blades of the Savonius wind
Received in revised form 2 September 2022 turbine is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the shape of the blade is parameterized by the third-order
Accepted 14 September 2022
Bezier curve, and then a certain number of design schemes in the design space are obtained by the Latin
Available online xxxx
hypercube sampling method and the torque coefficient of each design scheme is evaluated based on
Keywords: CFD simulation, and next a radial basis function surrogate model is constructed based on these design
Blade optimization schemes and their torque coefficients, and finally the optimal design scheme is obtained by solving the
Savonius turbine surrogate model using the marine predator algorithm, and is verified using the CFD simulation. The
CFD results show that when the tip speed ratio is 1, the average torque coefficient of the optimized blade
Marine predator algorithm
obtained by the above method is about 7% higher than that of the classical semicircular blade, and
Radial basis function model
under other tip speed ratios, the average torque coefficients of the optimized blade is also significantly
Latin hypercube sampling
Bezier curve higher than that of the classical blade. Furthermore, compared with the classical semicircular blade,
about 11% materials can be saved in the manufacturing of the optimized blade.
© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction Savonius wind turbine is a typical vertical axis wind turbine.

The use of classical fossil energy has caused increasingly se-
rious environmental problems, and the development and utiliza-
tion of renewable energy have attracted more and more attention
from mankind. Due to the unique advantages such as clean,
pollution-free, and inexhaustible, wind energy has become a ma-
jor source of renewable energy and the wind power industry has
also been growing continuously (Kaldellis, 2022). Wind turbine
is a device which converts wind energy into electrical energy.
According to the position relationship between the wind direction
and the wind turbine shaft, wind turbine can be divided into
two categories: horizontal axis wind turbines and vertical axis
wind turbines. In the past decades, horizontal axis wind turbines
remains the focus of all wind energy related research activity and
are the primary wind energy devices. In recent years, vertical axis
wind turbines have received more and more attention. Due to
their simple and compact structure, vertical axis wind turbines
are more suitable for small and medium-scale power generation,
especially in urban and semi-urban area (Belmili et al., 2017;
Elsakka et al., 2019; Li et al., 2021).
∗ Corresponding author at: School of Mechanical Engineering, Qilu University
of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250353, China.
E-mail address: xushuhui@qlu.edu.cn (S. Xu).
Owing to its simple structure, good starting characteristics, low
operating speed, and the ability to capture the wind from any
direction, Savonius wind turbine has attracted more and more re-
searchers’ attention in recent years (Tahani et al., 2017). However,
the efficiency of the classical Savonius wind turbine to capture
wind energy is relatively low. Many scholars are committed to
studying how to improve the wind capture ability of this type of
wind turbine from the following three aspects:
(1) Changing its basic structural and operating parameters. The
structural and operating parameters of the wind turbine, such
as eccentricity coefficient, overlap ratio, high diameter ratio, tip
speed ratio, blade chord length and radian, etc., would affect the
aerodynamic performance of the wind turbine, thus researchers
have carried out a large number of numerical and experimen-
tal studies to look for optimal parameters which can maximize
the output power. In order to explore the effect of different
tip speed ratios on the wind capture performance of the wind
turbine, researchers have done a lot of work based on numerical
simulation technology, and found that when the tip speed ratio
is in the range of 0.6 to 1, the wind turbine has better wind
capture performance (Ferrari et al., 2017; Kim and Cheong, 2015;
Mercado-Colmenero et al., 2018). The suitable overlap ratio has
a direct improvement on the starting characteristics of the wind
turbine. Kamoji et al. (2009) and Roy and Saha (2013) discussed

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2022.09.062
2352-4847/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al.
Nomenclature
OL Overlap ratio [–]
s Overlap distance between two blades [m]
d Blade chord length [m]
D Diameter of the rotor [m]
DR Diameter of the rotating domain [m]
λ Tip Speed Ratio (TSR) [–]
A Area swept by the turbine [m2 ]
R Radius of the rotor [m]
M Torque [N/m]
V Inlet velocity [m/s]
ω Angular velocity of the rotor [rad/s]
ρ Density of air [kg/m3 ]
H Height of the rotor [m]
Cm Coefficient of torque [–]
∆θ Angle associated to the time step [◦ ]
∆t Time step [s]
y+ Dimensionless wall distance [–]
P0 Starting point of the cubic Bezier curve [–]
P1 Control points of cubic Bezier curve [–]
P2 Control points of cubic Bezier curve [–]
P3 End point of the cubic Bezier curve [–]
B Bernstein polynomial [–]
β Coefficient term of RBF [–]
Z Design samples [–]
F Predicted value of the sample [–]
ϕ Basis function [–]
Xi The ith candidate solution [–]
Xinew New solution generated based on Xi [–]
K Dimension of the variable [–]
NP Population size [–]
Iter Number of iterations [–]
xmax Upper bound on the j design variable [–]
j
xmin
j Lower bound on the j design variable [–]
Elite Optimal solution individual in the current
population [–]
RBi A vector of random numbers whose di-
mensions conform to a standard normal
distribution [–]
RLi A vector of random numbers whose di-
mensions conform to the Levy distribution
[–]
the performance of the wind turbine with different overlap ratios,
and concluded that the wind turbine can achieve the highest
efficiency when the overlap ratio is 0.2. Wenehenubun et al.
(2015) and Amiri and Anbarsooz (2019) studied the number
of wind turbine blades, and the results show that the number
of blades has a significant impact on specific wind conditions.
Thiyagaraj et al. (2021) studied the effect of the overlap ratio
and blade number on the performance of the Savonius turbine,
and the results proved that when the blade number is 2 and
the overlapping ratio is 0.2, the turbine achieves the maximum
power. Mohammadi et al. (2018) used artificial neural network
and genetic algorithm to optimize the parameters such as aspect
ratio, overlap ratio, tip speed ratio, rotation speed, etc, to make
Savonius turbine reaches maximum energy capture efficiency.
(2) Adding some auxiliary structures. Yahya et al. (2021) in-
creased some guide blades near the blade, and studied the in-
fluence of the number and installation angle of the guide blades
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378
on improving the performance of the double-blade Savonius tur-
bine. The results demonstrate that a suitable mounting angle
and number of guide blades can increase the power of the wind
turbine by 40%. Abdelaziz et al. (2022) added an auxiliary blade
to improve the flow characteristics of the region, and the study
shows that the curved and straight auxiliary blades can increase
the energy capture efficiency of the turbine by about 8% and
9%, respectively. Eshagh Nimvari et al. (2020) added a porous
deflector plate upstream of the wind turbine to improve the
complex turbulent zone generated near the wind turbine rotor,
thereby improving the energy capture efficiency of the wind
turbine. Similarly, Fatahian et al. (2022) eliminated the negative
torque generated by the return blades by studying a new type
of deflector plate that combined with the use of rotary cylinders
to increase the overall performance of the wind turbine. The
common of the above studies is minimizing the adverse impact
of the negative torque generated by the return blade.
(3) Changing the shape of the blades. Blades are key com-
ponents of the Savonius wind turbine and their shape would
directly affect the energy capture efficiency of the turbine. Tian
et al. (2018) proposed a type of blade with different convex
and concave sides and they used two design variables to re-
spectively represent the heights of the two sides. Then they
used particle swarm optimization and kriging surrogate model to
obtain the optimal design parameters. Chan et al. (2018) used 3
variable points to control the shape of the blade and employed
genetic algorithms to seek the optimal shape of the blade. Roy
and Saha (2015) improved the profile of the Bach-type blades,
and the results showed that the improved Bach-type turbine
has 34.8% better performance than the Bach-type turbine. Alom
and Saha (2019) investigated and compared the wind capture
efficiency of the turbines with the classical semi-circular, ellip-
tical, benesh-type, and modified bach-type blades. Masdari et al.
(2019) coupled the discrete vortex method (for calculating the
power coefficient), the class shape transfer function method (for
expressing the airfoil shape), and the salp swarm algorithm to
find the optimal airfoil shape for an airfoil based Savonius wind
turbine and the obtained blade significantly improves the power
coefficient of the turbine. Mohamed et al. (2011) placed a barrier
plate upstream of the wind turbine and optimized the blade pro-
file, so that the wind turbine achieves an optimal configuration.
Meri Al Absi et al. (2021) improved the Savonius turbine of the
classical elliptical blade by means of experiments and numerical
simulations, and made the inner surface of the elliptical blade
into a zigzag shape, which significantly improves the conversion
efficiency of the wind turbine.
The above researches show that optimizing the shape of the
blade is an important means to improve the energy capture effi-
ciency of the Savonius wind turbine. However, at present, there
is no method with high automaticity, high reliability, and high
efficiency for the blade shape optimization yet. Some studies have
not moved away from the stereotype design mode of ‘‘design -
analysis - redesign - reanalysis’’, and the adjustments of the de-
sign schemes heavily relies on the designer’s existing experience
or the induction and summary of limited experiments or simula-
tion results, thus the situations in the entire design space usually
cannot be fully investigated. Though some work mentioned above
employ intelligent optimization algorithms to the blade shape
optimization problem, there are still some deficiencies in these
works, such as low efficiency, poor results, and so on. This paper
proposes a novel blade shape optimization method for the Savo-
nius wind turbine. Firstly, the third-order Bezier curve is used to
parametrically describe the shape of the blade, and then a certain
number of design schemes in the design space are obtained by
the Latin hypercube sampling method, and the torque coefficient
of each design scheme is evaluated by CFD simulation, and then
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al.
Fig. 1. 2-D simplified Schematic diagram of the classical Savonius wind turbine.
a radial basis function surrogate model is constructed based on
these design schemes and their torque coefficients, and finally
the marine predator algorithm is used to solve the surrogate
model to obtain the optimal design scheme. This method has
the advantages of simple realization process, high efficiency, and
good optimization effect. When the tip speed ratio is 1, the
average torque coefficient of the optimized Savonius wind turbine
blades obtained by the proposed method is increased by about 7%
compared with that of the classical semicircular blades.
The reminder of this paper is organized as follows: the basic
description about the Savonius wind turbine is given in Section 2,
the optimization method proposed in this work is described in
detail in Section 3, the optimization results and related discus-
sions are given in Section 4, and the conclusions of this work is
given in Section 5.
2. Basic description about S type wind turbine
2.1. Geometry
Fig. 1 depicts a schematic diagram of a classical Savonius wind
turbine which consists of two semicircular blades. The working
principle of the turbine is that when the wind blows through the
turbine, a pressure difference can be generated on the two blades,
thus forming a counterclockwise torque to make the wind turbine
rotate (R et al., 1978). There is partial overlap between the two
blades, and the ratio of the overlapping distance to the diameter
of the wind turbine rotor is called the overlap ratio, as Eq. (1)
shows. The size of the overlap ratio has a significant influence
on the energy capture efficiency of the wind turbine. The overlap
ratio selected in this article is 0.18.
s
OL = , (1)
d
where s is the overlapping distance between the blades, D is the
diameter of the rotor of the wind turbine.
2.2. Performance parameters
The tip speed ratio (TSR), also known as the high speed coef-
ficient of the wind turbine, is the basic parameter which reflects
the rotational speed of the wind turbine, and is defined as the
ratio of the maximum tangential speed of the wind turbine blade
to the inbound flow velocity, as Eq. (2) shows (R et al., 1978).
ωR
λ= , (2)
V n
where λ denotes the TSR, ω is the rotational angular velocity of
the wind turbine blade, R is the maximum radius of the wind
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378
turbine rotor, and V is the wind speed upstream of the wind
turbine.
The torque coefficient represents the ability of the wind tur-
bine to output torque at a specific tip speed ratio, as Eq. (3) shows
(R et al., 1978).
M
Cm = (3)
1
4
ρ V 2 D2 H
The wind energy utilization coefficient indicates the ability of
the wind turbine to convert wind energy into mechanical energy,
as Eq. (4) shows (R et al., 1978).
P
CP = (4)
1
2
ρ DHV 3
In Eqs. (3) and (4), ρ is the air density; D is the rotor diameter
of the wind turbine, H is the height of the wind turbine blade (the
height of the wind turbine blade in this article is 1 m), M is the
torque of the wind turbine blade, and P is the actual power of the
wind turbine.
From the expressions of the tip speed ratio, torque coeffi-
cient, and wind energy utilization coefficient, the torque coeffi-
cient and wind energy utilization coefficient have the following
relationship.
CP = λCm (5)
Therefore, this paper uses the torque coefficient Cm as a per-
formance index to evaluate the wind capture ability of the wind
turbine.
3. Optimization method
In this paper, multidisciplinary knowledge such as computer
graphics, computational fluid dynamics, radial basis function sur-
rogate model technology, and computational intelligence are
comprehensively used to optimize the shape of the blades of
the Savonius wind turbine with the aim of improving the wind
capture ability of the turbine. Firstly, the blade shape is parame-
terized by the third-order Bezier curve, and then a certain number
of sample schemes are determined based on the experimental
design method and their torque coefficients are evaluated one by
one using the computational fluid dynamics numerical simulation
technology, and then a surrogate model with less computational
cost and sufficient accuracy is established based on the radial
basis function model, and used as an alternative to the CFD simu-
lation and analysis process to improve the calculation efficiency,
and finally the optimization results are obtained by combining
the marine predator algorithm and the surrogate model, and then
verified using the CFD numerical simulation technology.
3.1. Parametric modeling
In the shape optimization problem, how to parametrically
express the shape is the first problem to be solved. Bezier curve
is an effective means of parametric modeling. Bezier curve is
defined based on the start point, the end point, and the control
points, and the shape of the curve will change with the change
of the positions of the control points. According to the number
of control points, Bezier curve can be divided into the first-order
Bezier curve (0 control points), the second-order Bezier curve (1
control point), the third-order Bezier curve (2 control points), and
so on. The mathematical expression of the n-th-order Bezier curve
is given as Eq. (6) (Duraklı and Nabiyev, 2022).
∑
P(t) = Pi Bi,n (t), (6)
i=0
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al.
Fig. 2. Blade profiles based on Bezier curve.
Fig. 3. 2D blade with thickness characteristics.
where Pi is the coordinate value of each point, n is the number of
orders of the Bezier curve, and Bi,n (t) is the Bernstein polynomial.
In this paper, the 3rd-order Bezier curve is used to paramet-
rically express the blade shape. The mathematical expression of
the 3rd-order Bezier curve is as Eq. (7).
P(t) = (1 − t)3 P0 + 3t(1 − t)2 P1 + 3t 2 (1 − t)P2 + t 3 P3 t ∈ [0, 1] , (7)
where P0 is the start point, P3 is the end point, P1 and P2 are the
control points.
In this paper, the coordinates of P0 and P3 are fixed to P0 (0,
0) and P3 (500, 0) to ensure that the chord length of the blade is
500 mm. Then, by changing the coordinates of P1 and P2 , different
shape profiles can be obtained, as showed in Fig. 2. That is to say,
the shape characteristics of the wind turbine blade are attributed
to these 4 parameters of the coordinate values of P1 and P2 . In this
work, the range of the abscissa of point P1 is 80∼100; the range
of the ordinate of point P1 is 230∼330; the range of the abscissa
of point P2 is 430∼530, and the range of the ordinate of point P2
is 170∼270.
Based on the blade shape profiles obtained by the Bezier curve,
wind turbine blades with thickness characteristics can be created.
In this work, this process is realized with the help of the offset
command in AUTOCAD software. An obtained blade is showed in
Fig. 3 as an example.
3.2. Sample acquisition
Selecting representative samples is a key point to establish a
successful surrogate model. The sample points should be evenly
distributed in the sample space for a problem of lack of prior
knowledge. Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) is a random-based
sampling method proposed by McKAY (Mckay and Beckman,
1979) and others. This method can guarantee that the samples are
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378
distributed across the entire range even if the number of particles
is small.
The basic idea of LHS is described as follows (Tian et al., 2019).
Suppose Z is an n-dimensional hypercube which is consist of n
variables zj (j = 1,2,. . . , n). The steps to obtain H samples within
this hypercube is given as follows: (1) Equally divide the range
of every variable zj into H sub-ranges. (2) Construct a matrix S
with H rows and n columns and every column of this matrix is a
random full permutation of the sequence {1, 2, . . . , H}; (3) Take
the jth (j = 1,2,. . . , n) element of the ith (i = 1,2,. . . , H) row
of S as an index to select one sub-range of zj , and then get a
sample number randomly within this sub-range. After processing
every element in S, a set of Latin hypercube sampling points are
obtained.
Latin hypercube sampling has been widely used in various
fields. Therefore, the experimental design method of Latin hy-
percube sampling is used in this work, and 80 groups of sample
points are obtained within a certain design space.
3.3. CFD simulation
In this work, CFD simulation is used to evaluate the wind
capture capacity of different design schemes. Studies have shown
that for Savonius wind turbine, two-dimensional CFD simulation
can well balance calculation accuracy and calculation efficiency
(Alom and Saha, 2019; Elsakka et al., 2019; Marinić-Kragić et al.,
2020; Tian et al., 2018). In this work, the CFD simulation process
is first verified on the classical Savonius wind turbine. The bound-
ary conditions of the 2D flow field simulation in this work are
shown in Fig. 4, and the computational domain size and the wind
turbine size are given in Table 1. The computational domain is
divided into a stationary domain and a rotating domain surround-
ing the wind turbine. The rotating domain is used to simulate
the rotary motion of the wind turbine. The data transfer between
the rotating domain and the stationary domain is carried out by
establishing a slip mesh interface between these two domains.
In order to ensure that the calculation result is not affected by
the boundaries of the computational domain, and according to
the numerical simulation results of Eshagh Nimvari et al. (2020),
the calculation domain must be large enough. In this work, the
size of the computational domain is selected as 24D×12D. Air
is used as the fluid medium. The left side of the computational
domain is regarded as the velocity inlet and the wind speed
value is set to 7 m/s, and the right side of the computational
domain is set as the pressure outlet, which is the same as the
atmospheric pressure. Both the upper and lower boundaries of
the computational domain are set as the wall condition, and the
blade surface is set as the non-slip wall surface. The solver uses
the SIMPLE format and the second-order windward format to
improve the accuracy of the solution. The convergence residuals
are set to 10−6 .
In this study, the boundary layer turbulence is simulated
using the incompressible Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier
Stokes(URANS) equations and the SST k-ω turbulence model
widely used by simulation researchers (Alom and Saha, 2019;
Asadi and Hassanzadeh, 2021; Ferdoues et al., 2017; Sagharichi
et al., 2018) to accurately solve the flow field near the blade,
and the expression of the incompressible Unsteady Reynolds-
Averaged Navier Stokes equations is shown in Eq. (8).
∂ ui
=0
∂ xi
∂ ui ∂ ( ) 1 ∂p ∂
(
∂ ui
)
(8)
+ ui uj = − + µ − u′i u′j
∂t ∂ xj ρ ∂ xi ∂ xj ∂ xj
where ρ is the air density, µ is the aerodynamic viscosity, and p
is the pressure. The transport equation of the SST k-ω turbulence
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378

Fig. 4. 2-D wind turbine simulation area and boundary condition settings.

efficiency. In general, the more grids and the shorter the time
Table 1 steps, the more accurate the simulation results will be, but at
Geometric dimensions. the same time the calculation time will be longer. In order to
Structure size parameters Values determine the appropriate number of grids and time steps, about
Diameter of the rotor of the wind turbine (D) 0.909 (m) 65,000, about 85,000, about 105,000 grids were compared in this
Diameter of the wind turbine blades (d) 0.5 (m) work, and the results are shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen that
Diameter of the rotational domain (DR) 1 (m) the differences of the Cm values corresponding to the number
Overlap ratio (s/d) 0.18 of 85,000 grids, the number of 105,000 grids, and the 65,000
Length of the static domain 21.816 (m)
Width of the static domain 18.18 (m)
are very small, so the 85,000 grid is selected as the number of
Distance from the center of the rotor to the upper wall 9.09 (m) grids in this work considering the computational efficiency. Then,
Distance from the center of the wind turbine rotor to 7.272 (m) different time step sizes corresponding to ∆θ = 0.5◦ , ∆θ = 1◦ ,
the entrance ∆θ = 2◦ , and ∆θ = 4◦ are compared, and the results are shown
Center coordinates of the rotor of the wind turbine (0, 0)
in Fig. 7. It can be seen that the results are very close when
Number of blades 2
∆θ = 0.5◦ or ∆θ = 1◦ , so the time step is finally selected as
∆θ = 1◦ .
Based on the above settings, a numerical simulation for 10 ro-
model is shown in Eq. (9) (Menter, 1994). tation periods of a classical Savonius wind turbines is performed,
∂ ∂ ∂ ∂k as showed in Fig. 8. It can be seen that with the increase of the
[ ]
(ρ k) + (ρ kui ) = Γk + Gk − Yk − SK + Gb rotation cycle, the simulation results gradually tend to be stable,
∂t ∂ xi ∂ xj [ ∂ xj ]
∂ ∂ ∂ ∂ω and the difference between the average torque coefficient of the
(ρω) + (ρωui ) = Γω + Gω − Yω + Dω + SW + GWb tenth cycle and that of the previous cycle is very small, so in
∂t ∂ xi ∂ xj ∂ xj
the future simulation, the average torque coefficient of the 10th
(9) rotation cycle is selected as the evaluation criterion for the wind
where Gk represents the kinetic energy of the turbulent flow, Gω capture ability of the wind turbine.
is the equation of ω, Γk and Γω represent the effective diffusion Based on the above CFD process, the obtained average torque
terms of k and ω, respectively, Yk and Yω represent the divergence coefficients of the classical Savonius wind turbine under different
terms of k and ω, respectively, and Dω represents the orthogonal tip speed ratios are compared with the wind tunnel test data
divergence term. SK and SW are user-defined source terms. Gb given in the literature (R et al., 1978), as shown in Fig. 9. It
and GWb account for buoyancy terms as described in effects of can be found that, when the tip speed ratio is less than 0.9,
buoyancy on turbulence in the k-ω Models. the CFD simulation results are very close to the experimental
In this paper, ANSYS2020R1 Meshing module is used to divide results. When the tip speed ratio is equal to 1, the simulation
the grids. To ensure that the value of y+ is close to 1 and that results are slightly higher than the experimental value, but the
the turbulence characteristics of the blade near the wall surface error is not more than 5%. When the tip speed ratio is greater
are accurately captured, a total of 20 boundary layers are added than 1, as the tip speed ratio increases, the deviation of the CFD
around the blades. The height of the first layer is set to 0.1 mm simulation results and the test results increases. The reasons are:
and the inflation growth factor is set to 1.2. Meanwhile, the grids (1) With the increase of the angular velocity, the loss caused by
at the interface are also refined. The final grid division is shown the vibration of the shaft, the friction loss between the central
in Fig. 5. shaft and the bearing, and the additional loss of the bracket will
Since the topic studied is a non-steady-state problem, the time increase. But the CFD simulation does not take these losses into
step size should be considered, and the formula of the time step account, so the CFD simulation results are slightly higher than
is as Eq. (10) shows. the experimental results. (2) There may be some errors in the
experimental data.
∆θ Overall, the CFD simulation process used in this work is highly
∆t = ◦ , (10)
ω 180
π
accurate. For the aforementioned 80 set of sample schemes, the
above CFD simulation process is used to obtain their average
where ∆θ is angle relative to one time step. torque coefficients as the basis for constructing the surrogate
In CFD simulation, the number of grids and the selected time model in the following section.
steps have significant impacts on the accuracy and computational
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H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378

Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of the division of the grids.

Fig. 6. Mesh independence verification.

Fig. 7. Time step size independence verification.

3.4. RBF surrogate model

describing the strong nonlinear relationship between the blade
shapes and their energy capture efficiencies.
Surrogate model technology is a regression method that uses
The construction process is as follows: each design sample and
the information of known sample points to deduce the response
its corresponding average torque coefficient values are recorded
value of unknown design points, and its basic idea is to use the se-
as Zi and Fi (i = 1, 2, 3,. . . , N), respectively, where N represents
lected sample points to build an approximate model with enough
the total number of sample schemes. First of all, the RBF model
prediction accuracy and fitting accuracy. Radial basis function
basis function should be selected, the common basis function is
model is a very widely used type of surrogate models. With a
shown in Table 2, the basis function selected in this article is
simple structure, high flexibility, high efficiency, and the ability
the Multiquadric basis function, and the constant term coefficient
that can approximate arbitrary nonlinear functions (Nedelkova
c is 0.5. The RBF model is then built as Eq. (11) shown below
et al., 2016), radial basis function model is very suitable for
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H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378

Fig. 8. CFD simulation results of the torque coefficient of 10 cycles at TSR = 1.

represents the Euclidean distance between Z and Zi , and βi is

the coefficient term in the model, which can be denoted as β =
[β1 , β2 , . . . , βN ]. The value of the coefficient β is then determined
based on the interpolation condition that the model’s predicted
value at every known sample point is equal to the true response
value of this sample point, i.e. F (Zi ) = Fi (i = 1, 2, 3,. . . , N), which
can be expressed as Eq. (12):

Z · β=F (12)
ϕ (∥Z 1 − Z 1 ∥) . . . ϕ (∥Z 1 − Z N ∥)
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
F1
⎢.. . .
. . .. . ⎥
⎥, F = ⎢.. ⎥.
⎥ ⎢
where Z = ⎢⎣. ⎦ ⎣ ⎦
ϕ (∥Z N − Z 1 ∥) . . . ϕ (∥Z N − Z N ∥) FN
Based on Eq. (12), β can be determined as β=Z −1 · F . Once
β is determined, the built RBF model can be used to predict
Fig. 9. The comparison between the CFD simulation results and the the average torque coefficient value of any scheme in the design
experimental data (R et al., 1978) under different TSR. space.

3.5. Marine predators algorithm (MPA)

Table 2
RBF kernel functions.
Kernel function type Formula
Marine Predators Algorithm (MPA) was proposed in 2020 by
)1 Faramarzi et al. (2020). The principle of this algorithm is based on
ϕ (r ) = r 2 +c
( 2 2
Multiquadric the marine predator foraging strategy, that is, the Lévy and Brow-
Thinplate ϕ (r ) = r 2 log(r +1) nian movements of marine predators, and the best encounter
rate strategy between predators and prey, which simulates the
( 2
)
Gaussian ϕ (r ) = exp − 12 cr 2
survival of the fittest in the ocean. Marine predator algorithm
Cubic ϕ (r ) = r 3 has been widely used to solve problems in various fields, such as
Linear ϕ (r ) = r multi-level image segmentation (Abd Elaziz et al., 2021), struc-
tural damage detection (Li et al., 2021), and EEG/ERP signal en-
hancement (Yadav et al., 2022), etc.
(González-Gorbeña et al., 2018): As a population intelligent optimization algorithm, MPA is
similar to other swarm intelligence optimization algorithms.
N
∑ Firstly, a population is initialized. At this stage, the algorithm uses
F (Z ) = βi ϕ (∥Z − Z i ∥) , (11) Eq. (13) to randomly generate several candidate solutions within
i=1 the optimization space.
where F (Z ) represents the predicted value of the RBF model
X i = [x1 , x2 , . . . , xK ], i = 1, 2, . . . , NP
for any design Z, where ϕ = (ϕ (∥z −z1 ∥) , . . . , ϕ (∥z −zn ∥))T is , (13)
xj = xmin + rand · xmax − xmin (j = 1, 2, . . . , K )
( )
the basis function of the Eurotic distance as a variable, ∥Z − Z i ∥ j j j

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H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378

Fig. 10. The pseudocodes of MPA.

where Xi represents the i-th candidate solution, NP is the popula- where CF = (1 − iter /max_iter)2·iter /max_iter , where iter represents
tion size, K is the dimension of the problem, xmin
j and xmax
j are the the current number of iterations, and max_iter represents the
upper and lower bounds of the j-th design variable, respectively, maximum number of iterations of the algorithm set.
and rand is a random number between [0, 1]. In the third stage, the algorithm employs operators as shown
After population initialization, MPA begins to iteratively try in Eq. (17).
to update the solution population. The entire iterative process is stepsizei = RL i ⊗ (RL i ⊗ Elite − X i )
evenly divided into three stages, at which the algorithm employs
w
, (17)
different operators. The operator used in the first stage is shown X ne
i = Elite + 0.5 · CF ⊗ stepsizei i = 1, 2, . . . , NP
in Eq. (14), After generating a new solution for each solution in the popula-
stepsizei = RBi ⊗ (Elite − RBi ⊗ X i ) tion, MPA employs a greedy strategy to determine the trade-offs
w
, (14) for the new solution. Specifically, if X ne
i is superior to Xi , replace
w
X ne
i = X i + 0.5 · rand(1, K ) ⊗ stepsizei i = 1, 2, . . . , NP new
Xi with X i , otherwise X inew
is discarded and Xi is retained, thus
completing the update of the solution population.
where RBi is a vector of 1×K, each dimension of it is a random
In addition, the algorithm also simulates the effects of eddies
number that conforms to the standard normal distribution; Elite
w and fish aggregation in the marine environment. In each iteration,
is the optimal solution individual in the current population; X ne
i after the population is updated in the manner described above,
is a new solution generated based on Xi ; rand(1, K ) is a vector of
the algorithm attempts to update the population again using
1×K, and its dimensions are random numbers within [0, 1] that
Eq. (18).
conform to the uniform distribution; ⊗ represents point-to-point
multiplication. X i + CF [X min + R ⊗ (X max − X min )] ⊗ U ifr ≤ 0.2
{
w
In the second stage, MPA uses two different operators. Half of X ne
i = ,
the solution population is updated using Eq. (15), X i + [FADs(1 − r) + r] (X r1 − X r2 ) else

stepsizei = RL i ⊗ (Elite − RL i ⊗ X i ) (18)

w
, (15) where r is a random number evenly distributed within [0, 1];
X ne
i = X i + 0.5 · rand(1, K ) ⊗ stepsizei i = 1, 2, . . . , NP /2
U is a 1×K vector with dimensions 0 or 1, which U can be
where RL i is a vector of 1×K, whose dimensions are random obtained by first generating a 1×K vector of random numbers
numbers that conform to Levy distribution. whose dimensions are uniformly distributed within [0, 1], and
The other half of the solution population is updated using if the value on a dimension is less than 0.2, it is changed to
Eq. (16). 0, otherwise it is changed to 1. Xmin and Xmax are 1×K vectors
composed of the lower limit and the upper limit of the values of
stepsizei = RBi ⊗ (RBi ⊗ Elite − X i ) each design variable, respectively. Xr1 and Xr2 are two solutions
w
, (16)
X ne
i = Elite + 0.5 · CF ⊗ stepsizei i = NP /2, . . . , NP randomly selected in the current solution population.
12373
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al.
Fig. 11. Flowchart of the blade shape optimization method.
Similarly, for the generated X ne w
, MPA still uses the greedy
i
strategy to determine its trade-offs, thus completing another
update to the current solution population.
The pseudocode of MPA is shown in Fig. 10.
By solving the RBF surrogate model using MPA, the solution
characterizing the optimal shape can be found. In this work, the
population size of MPA is set to 40, and the maximum number
of iterations is set to 200. The overall process of the optimization
method proposed in this work is shown in Fig. 11.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Optimized shape
The process of using MPA to find the optimization surrogate
model is shown in Fig. 12, from which it can be seen that the solv-
ing process has converged after about 50 iterations, this indicates
that MPA has a high optimization efficiency. The obtained results
were P1 = [80.7753, 280.8551], P2 = [451.8408, 257.1522].
The predictive Cm value of this scheme given by the constructed
RBF model is 0.2709, and the real Cm value obtained by CFD
simulation is 0.2697, which is about 7% higher than that of the
classical semicircular blade. At the same time, the predicted value
of the model is very close to the real value, indicating that the
constructed RBF model has good predictive ability.
Fig. 13 shows the comparison between the shapes of the
optimized blade and the classical blade. Compared to the classical
semicircular blade, the maximum height of the optimized blade is
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378
Fig. 12. Optimization process of marine predator algorithms.
Fig. 13. Comparison of the optimized blade and the classical blade.
reduced. The skeleton line of the optimized profile is 11% shorter
than that of the classical blade, thus less materials are required
for manufacturing.
4.2. Torque coefficient analysis
Fig. 14 shows the comparison of the torque coefficients of the
wind turbines with the optimized blades and with the classical
blades in one rotation cycle under TSR = 1. It can be observed
that, when the rotation angle of the turbine is within 0∼90◦ and
180∼270◦ , the instantaneous torque coefficient of the optimized
turbine is obviously higher than that of the classical turbine.
Fig. 15 shows the comparison of the torque coefficient of the
optimized single blade and the classical single blade within one
rotation cycle. In the range of 0∼160◦ , the torque coefficient of
the optimized blade is higher than that of the classical blade. In
the range of 160∼240◦ , the torque coefficient of the optimized
blade is similar with that of the classical blade. In the range of
240∼360◦ , the torque coefficient of the optimized blade is lower
than that of the classical blade. Fig. 16 shows the comparison of
the average torque coefficients and average power coefficients
of the optimized turbine and the classical turbine at different
TSRs. From this figure, it can be seen that both the average
torque coefficients of the optimized turbine and the classical
turbine decrease with the increase of TSR, but the average torque
coefficient of the optimized turbine is higher than that of the
classical turbine at each TSR, especially when TSR = 1.09, the
average torque coefficient of the optimized turbine is about 8.2%
higher than that of the classical turbine. Both the average power
coefficients of the two types of turbines firstly rise and then
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al.
Fig. 14. Comparison of the torque coefficients of the optimized Savonius turbine
and the classical Savonius turbine in one cycle when TSR = 1.
Fig. 15. Comparison of the torque coefficients of single optimized blade and
classical blade in one cycle at TSR = 1.
decrease with the increase of TSR, and reach the maximum when
TSR = 1.
4.3. Pressure and flow rate analysis
This section explores the flow characteristics of wind turbines
by comparing the pressure, velocity, and vorticity distributions
around the optimized turbine and the classical turbine, to explain
the reason why these two turbines have different performance.
The situation when the rotation angle of one blade is 90◦ (at this
time, the rotation angle of the other blade is 270◦ ) is studied
in following as a representative. Fig. 17 accurately shows the
comparison of the pressure values on the concave and convex
surfaces of the single optimized blade and a classical blade when
their rotation angles are 90◦ and 270◦ . Fig. 18 shows the velocity
distribution around the optimized turbine and the classical tur-
bine. It can be seen in Fig. 15 that the torque coefficient of the
optimized blade is higher than that of the classical blade in the
range of the rotation angle of 0∼120◦ . From Fig. 17(a), it can be
seen that the pressure on the convex side of the optimized blade
is not significantly different from the pressure on the convex side
of the classical blade, but the pressure on the concave side of the
optimized blade is significantly lower than the pressure on the
concave side of the classical blade, which results in an increase
in the net torque of the advancing blades. This is favoring the
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378
rotation of the advancing blades. The reason is that the optimized
blade is flatter, and the airflow is more likely to flow from the
root and tip of the blade, forming a stronger reverse flow (the
airflow blocked by the convex surface of the returning blade and
the concave surface of the advancing blade, flows toward the
tip of the advancing blade). When the reverse flow meets the
upstream airflow, separation occurs at the tip of the advancing
blade, and forms stronger high-speed vortices. Vortices shedding
would result in a lower low pressure area on the convex side
near the blade tip. Also because the optimized blade is flatter, the
optimized blade also has a stronger recovery flow on the convex
side of the advancing blade, thus creating lower pressure on the
convex side of the advancing blade. Fig. 19 shows the pressure
distribution around the optimized turbine and the classical tur-
bine. It can be intuitively seen from this figure that the bottom of
the optimized forward blade has a larger low pressure area, and
the low pressure on the convex side of the optimized forward
blade is more obvious than the low pressure on the convex side
of the classical blade. At 270◦ , it can be seen from Fig. 17(b) that
the pressure on the concave side of the optimized blade is lower
than the pressure on the concave side of the classical blade. This is
a negative effect. This is due to the optimized blades that increase
the jet flow and the recovery flow, as Fig. 19(a) shows. Under
the combined action of jet flow, recovery flow and windward
separation, stronger suction vortices are formed on the entire
concave side of the return blade, resulting in a larger low pressure
area. Meanwhile, it can be seen from Fig. 17(b) and Fig. 19 that at
the positions on the convex side and close to the tip, the pressure
of the optimized blade is higher. From Fig. 18, it can be found
that these positions are located in a stagnation zone (area with
very low wind speeds), and the stagnation zone of the optimized
blade is larger and closer to the tip This is because the optimized
blade is flatter and has a stronger blocking effect on the wind.
This also means that the optimized return blade is subjected to
greater negative torque which inhibits the rotation of the blade.
Therefore, at this stage, the performance of the optimized blade
is worse than the classical blade.
Although the optimized blade performs worse than the clas-
sical blade during the return process, its advantages during the
advancing process are more significant. When the average torque
coefficient of one rotation cycle is considered, the optimized
blade is still better than the classical blade. In addition, the root of
the blade bears alternating load during the rotation of the turbine.
Since the optimized blade will generate greater torque in its
advancing and return processes, its root is more prone to fatigue
failure thus needs to be strengthened. This is a disadvantage of
the optimized blade.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, a design method with high efficiency and intel-
ligence for optimizing the shape of Savonius wind turbine blade
is proposed. The shape of the blade is parametrically expressed
using the 3rd-order Bezier curve, and then Latin hypercube sam-
pling method is used to sample some design schemes in the
design space. Meanwhile, the torque coefficient of each sampled
design scheme is evaluated based on CFD technology, and then
a RBF surrogate model is constructed using the sampled design
schemes and their torque coefficients, and finally the RBF sur-
rogate model is solved using the marine predator algorithm. In
addition, this paper also compared the wind capture ability of the
optimized blade and the classical blade under different tip speed
ratios and explain the reason why the optimized blade has better
performance. The main conclusions of this article are as follows:
(1). CFD simulation results show that when TSR = 1, the
average torque coefficient of the optimized blade is about 7%
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378

Fig. 16. Comparison of average torque and power coefficients of classical Savonius turbine and optimized Savonius turbine under different tip speed ratios: (a) torque
coefficient, (b) power coefficient.

Fig. 17. Comparison of the pressure on the concave and convex surfaces of the optimized blade and the classical blade: (a) at 90◦ , (b) at 270◦ .

higher than that of the classical semicircular blade. Meanwhile,
When TSR = 1.09, the average torque coefficient of the optimized
blade is about 8.2% higher than that of the classical semicircular
blade.
(2). The optimized blade has greatly improved the wind cap-
ture performance of the turbine in the range of rotation angle of
0∼90◦ and 180∼270◦ .
(3). Similar to the classical semicircular blade, the optimized
blade obtained in this paper also has the advantages of simple
structure, low cost, and easy manufacturing. Furthermore, com-
pared with the classical semicircular blade, about 11% materials
can be saved in the manufacturing of the optimized blade.
In the research process, it is found that there is still a lot of
room for improvement. For example, the basis function of the
RBF surrogate model has an impact on the accuracy of the model.
In future work, better blade shapes can be found by changing
the smooth parameters of the basis functions or constructing a
dynamic RBF surrogate model.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Huaijie Xia: Software, Writing – original draft, Writing – re-
view & editing, Visualization. Song Zhang: Investigation, Data
12376
curation, Validation. Rongyuan Jia: Visualization, Writing – re-
view & editing. Huadong Qiu: Investigation, Funding acquisition.
Shuhui Xu: Methodology, Supervision, Project administration,
Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgments
We sincerely thank the supports provided by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51905284) and
the Innovation capability improvement project of technology-
based small and medium-sized enterprises of Shandong Province,
China (Grant No. 2021TSGC1060), and we are very grateful to the
anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
H. Xia, S. Zhang, R. Jia et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 12366–12378

Fig. 18. Velocity and vorticity distribution of optimized turbine and classical turbine: (a) velocity distribution of classical blade, (b) velocity distribution of optimized
blade, (c) vorticity distribution of classical blade, (d) vorticity distribution of optimized blade.

Fig. 19. Pressure distribution of optimized turbine and classical turbine (a) classical blade, (b) optimized blade.

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