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Profile design of loop-type blade for small wind turbine

Article in International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing-Green Technology · October 2017
DOI: 10.1007/s40684-017-0043-9

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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING-GREEN TECHNOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 387-392 OCTOBER 2017 / 387

REGULAR PAPER DOI: 10.1007/s40684-017-0043-9

ISSN 2288-6206 (Print) / 2198-0810 (Online)

Profile Design of Loop-Type Blade for Small Wind

Turbine

Youngwon Kim1,2,*, Jeanho Park1,*, Nak-Kyu Lee1, and Jonghun Yoon2,#

1 Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, 143, Hanggaul-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do, 15588, South Korea
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang University, 55, Hanyangdaehak-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do, 15588, South Korea
# Corresponding Author / E-mail: yooncsmd@gmail.com, TEL: +82-31-400-5255, FAX +82-31-400-5256
*Youngwon Kim and Jeanho Park contributed equally to this work

KEYWORDS: Loop-type wind turbine, Horizontal axis wind turbine, Wind energy, Wind turbine, Turbine blade, 3D printing

The importance of renewable energy-based wind turbine for generating electricity has been significantly issued due to their
advantages in environment-friendly, low noise, good appearance and infinite energy source characteristics. Unfortunately, the turbine
with a loop-type blade has not been widely researched on the optimal design and performance test. This paper has targeted to propose
the optimal profile of loop-type blade for 3kW wind turbine based on basic design formulas in terms of tip speed ratio (TSR), twist
angle and chord length for loop-type blade, which was produced with 3D printing. Finally, by virtue of the wind tunnel tests, simplified
Model A-2 is selected as the optimal blade model in terms of performance and efficiency in energy harvesting for the wind turbine.

Manuscript received: November 29, 2016 / Revised: May 4, 2017 / Accepted: June 1, 2017

1. Introduction the angles of attack on wind turbine blades and aimed to analyze the
reliability of some of the simpler methods of estimating the 3D
It is of great interests to generate clean renewable energy since the effective angle of attack compared some of the more rigorous CFD
fossil based conventional resources such oil, coal, and natural gas. based method.
16
Substantially, produce CO2 gas and substantial environment pollution, Jo et al. demonstrated the method for determining the chord length
1 17
inevitably. Wind energy is the one of the attractive renewable energies of an airfoil by Schmitz numerical formula. Kong et al. have modified
since it does not only show efficient production rate with chemical-free thick NACA 63(6)-0xx airfoil at the blade root to increase the
2-5
process, but also generate unlimited resources. There are massive structural performance linking with design in straight leading edge and
researches on a wind turbine to generate electricity from wind energy
in which optimum design of blade profile is the most important
6
procedure to enhance the efficiency of the wind turbine. Related to
these researches, blade profile has been designed and correlated with
optimal TSR, twist angle, chord length and airfoil. However,
conventional turbine blade is frequently subjected to a failure since it
requires higher rotating speed, which results in undesirable noisy
induced by vortex at the blade tip, while a loop-type turbine blade as
shown in Fig. 1 is able to operate at relatively low rotating speed
7-11 12
without sacrificing energy efficiency. Ragheb et al. demonstrated
13
optimal TSR in wind turbine, analytically, and Tapia et al. showed a
typical relationship between the power coefficient and the TSR.
14
Morote presented a new approach to measure the effective angle of
attack distribution along the blades for the wind turbine installed in
15
yawed flow. Guntur et al. suggested several methodologies using Fig. 1 3D model of loop-type wind generator including blades, rotor,
blade element theory or 3D full model computations for the design of nacelle and tower.

© KSPE and Springer 2017

 388 / OCTOBER 2017 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING-GREEN TECHNOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 4

18
tapered trailing edge for enhancing production rate. Singh et al. has It physically demonstrates that total flow of wind cannot contribute to
tried to minimize the Reynolds number in the design of an airfoil, rotate the blade when ts is longer than tw, which results in loss of energy
which is able to guarantee high startup torque and performance with conversion. When ts is shorter than tw, total flow of wind is not allowed
10
starting at lower wind speed. Motohashi et al. suggested various to flow through the blade along the X-direction as depicted in Fig. 2.
ribbon type blades that similar to the loop-type blade, and compared From the equality between ts and tw as expressed in Eqs. (4) and (5),
r
power coefficient in accordance with twist angle and blade width. Also λoptimal and λpartial are calculated as 2.32 and 2.32· --- by assuming that
R
8
Shirota measured noise of wind turbines containing conventional type the number of n is 3 in which r is varies from zero to R (equal to 2.12 m)
and loop-type in different wind speed state and confirmed that loop- along the each blade, and the travel distance of the wind stream along the
8
type blade contribute to make lower noise. However, in case of the transverse direction is referred as 1.91 m from the previous literature.
loop-type wind turbine, there is limited researches on design
methodologies to obtain optimal blade profile in terms of TSR, twist 2π- D
⎧ ------ = ----
angle, chord length and airfoil etc. Therefore, this paper proposes a ⎪ nω V
⎨ (4)
general procedure to design blade profile of the loop-type turbine blade ⎪ω 2πV
= ----------
utilizing conventional theories including the blade element momentum ⎩ optimal nD
and linear momentum, which have been fabricated with 3D printing for
performance test.
⎧ ω optimal ⋅ R 2πV r 2π ⎛ R ⎞
⎪ λoptimal = ----------------------
- = ---------- ⋅ --- = ------ ----
⎪ V nD V n ⎝ D⎠
⎨ (5)
⎪ r
2. Parameters Design in Blade Profile ⎪ λpartial = λ ⋅ ---
R
⎩
Blade radius is a core parameter in the wind turbine to decide
9-12,
amount of power generation, which can be derived with Betz’s law Twist angle (θ), installation angle of airfoil, is an essential
19
as expressed in Eq. (1) since the kinetic energy of a free flowing parameter to design blade profile, which is defined by a diff angle (φ)
1 3
wind stream, --- ρAv , is not possible to be converged to pure energy, and angle of attack (α) as depicted in Fig. 3 where the direction of
2
relative wind is deviated from the direction of undisturbed wind since
P = Cp ⎛ --- ρAv ⎞
1 3
(1)
⎝2 ⎠ it is influenced by blade rotation. Inflow angle designates an angle
between the direction of relative wind and rotation plane of blade, and
where Cp, A indicate the Betz’s coefficient deciding efficiency and the angle of attack stands for an angle between the direction of relative
swept area of the wind turbine, ρ, v denote density and rated wind wind and chord line as shown in Fig. 3(b). 20,21
They are able to be
speed of free flowing wind stream. ρ and v have been utilized with expressed as following Eq. (6) and (7). 22

3
1.225 kg/m and 12 m/sec in general environment. In the Betz’s law,
since Cp cannot exceed 59.3% 12,19
in spite of assuming the undisturbed θ = φ–α (6)
wind stream, we have adopt a conservative value of 20% to achieve the
φ = --- arctan ⎛ -------⎞ r
target capacity of 3 kW with which swept area (A = πR ) of 14.17 m
2 2 2 1
(7)
3 ⎝ λR⎠
and the radius (R) of 2.12 m have been calculated. The TSR
v ωR
( λ = --- = -------- ) demonstrates the ratio between rotating speed (v) at the Blade width is determined by a chord length (C) along the chord
V V
end of the tip and wind speed (V), which influences on turbine line as depicted in Fig. 3(b). Eq. (8) demonstrates variation of the chord
efficiency, substantially. When rotating speed of the blade is length with respect to the inflow angle,
excessively low compared with wind speed, wind stream tends to slip
through blades, which results in low energy efficiency. In adverse, 8πr
φ = --------- ( 1 – cosφ ) (8)
cCL
tremendous high rotating speed obstructs smooth wind flow since it
acts as a wall against flowing wind, which induces low energy
efficiency in the wind turbine. It is assumed that an optimal TSR is
achieved when the time elapsed (ts) for each blade as expressed in Eq.
(2) to rotate to a neighboring blade is equal to the specific time (tw) for
airflow to pass through the blade along the transverse direction (X-
direction) with respect to the radial direction (D, travel distance of the
wind stream along the transverse direction, as shown in Fig. 2 as shown
in Eq. (3) in which ω and n indicate the angular velocity and the
12
number of blades, respectively.

2π
ts = ------- (2)
nω

D Fig. 2 Schematic figure of showing the time and parameter: (a) ts, R,
tw = ---- (3)
V r, (b) tw, R, D.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING-GREEN TECHNOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 4
where CL is lift coefficient assumed as 0.8. Fig. 4(a) demonstrates
21
variation of the proposed analytic chord length along the airfoil
position (r/R) where the 1.0 indicates a tip position of the blade.
However, chord length variation needs to be simplified since it does not
only relieve production cost, but also facilitate production procedures
without sacrificing efficiency of the turbine blade. Then, it is possible
to be linearized based on chord length variation over 0.75 of airfoil
Fig. 3 Layout of position of blade on wind field: (a) Schematic design
of blade set, (b) Airfoil and variable parameter angle
Fig. 4 Comparison of chord length: (a) Analytic value, (b) Simplified
value, (c) Scaling value
OCTOBER 2017 / 389
position since those part tends to take charge of overall efficiency of the
22
turbine blade as shown in Fig. 4(b). It is assumed that the chord
length of loop-type turbine blade is measured about 70% compared
with conventional one, which suggests the final scaling model as
shown in Fig. 4(c). Fig. 5 shows design procedure in terms of the chord
length to be attached in the loop-type turbine. Fig. 5(d) demonstrates
the proposed 3-dimensional blade profile in half symmetry condition.
However, it is quite challenging to make the proposed blade profile
with conventional manufacturing process since it has high twist angle
due to large curvature along the blade cross-section and nonlinear
center line in the 3D space. Because a designed blade profile has been
manufactured by a deep drawing with Al sheet plate, in general, the
Fig. 5 Schematic diagram of blade: (a) Analytic value, (b) Simplified
value, (c) and (d) Loop-Type blade using scaling value
Fig. 6 Blade design procedure: (a) Set the position of center line on
blade, (b) Set the position of airfoil on blade, (c) Shape of
basic blade profile
Fig. 7 Comparison of twist angle and top view: (a) Model A, (b)
Model A-1
 390 / OCTOBER 2017 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING-GREEN TECHNOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 4
complicated blade profile with arbitrary 3D surface tends to increase
mold price, dramatically.
Then, we are able to position the airfoils along the proposed center
22
line by applying chord length and twist angle and connected the each
airfoil profiles, finally, as depicted in Fig. 6(c).
That is why we proposed the other two simplified blade models to
facilitate production procedure in deep drawing for blade parts in which
the Model A-1 has flattened twist angle, linearly, for the airfoil position
(r/R) less than 0.5 along the radial direction of the blade since the blade
efficiency is mainly determined by outer blade profile. In addition,
Model A-2 has been modified the Model A-1 by linearizing center line
as represented in Fig. 8. Therefore, it is required to validate the
proposed three designs in terms of a cut-in speed and angular kinetic
energy compared with the analytic Model A in order to obtain
optimized blade profile demonstrating best performance.
3. Experiment
It does not only induce huge time-consuming, but also increase cost,
substantially, to manufacture the proposed three designs with full size,
directly, applying Al sheet plate. So, we produced 1/15 scaled models for the
3D printing, which have been compared with each other. For the 3D
printing, we utilized the Objet Connex3 machine with the type of polyjet
having 16-micron resolution. As a 3D printing material, the Vero White Plus
with the tensile strength of 50 MPa and the elastic modulus of 2.5 GPa, and
the fracture elongation of 20% has been applied to the proposed models.
Polyjet 3D printing is consists of three steps: jetting the photopolymer resin,
hardening a sprayed layer by emitting the ultraviolet (UV) rays, and
repeating these steps in layer-wise procedure. Since the thickness of a single
stacking layer is 16µm including solidification by UV rays, it takes 40 hours
for completing the proposed three parts. To finalize the printed part, support
materials should be removed from the main 3D printing part. Fig. 9
demonstrates the 3D printed blades for the three proposed blade profiles.
The cut-in wind speed indicates the threshold wind velocity when a
blade starts to rotate, which determines the efficiency of the wind
turbine. Then, it represents that an efficient wind turbine is able to
23
rotate the blade with a lower cut-in wind speed.
4. Result and Discussion
To validate the proposed blade models in terms of the cut-in wind
Fig. 8 Side view of blade profile: (a) Model A-1, (b) Model A-2
speed, the Digital anemometer (LM-81AM) with a resolution of 0.1 m/sec
was utilized to measure the starting wind speed for the proposed three
blades to rotate by increasing the input wind velocity. Fig. 10
demonstrates experimental results of the wind tunnel test in which the
Model A shows the lowest performance with the cut-in wind speed of
1.2 m/sec, and the Model A-1 and A-2 shows 1.5 and 1.4 m/sec,
respectively. It is noted that the Model A-2 demonstrates acceptable
performance in spite of linearization in blade profile. Therefore, it is
assured that the Model A-2 provides equivalent performance compared
with the other proposed models in terms of a low wind speed mode.
A tachometer (UT372), with non-contact type, has been utilized to
measure the revolutions per minute (RPM) of the proposed models
with increase of input wind velocities as depicted in Fig. 11 in which
the tachometer laser precisely counts the number of rotation over time
by measuring reflective signals from rotating blade surface. To convert
the measured RPM to physical performance of the proposed blade
1 2
model, the angular kinetic energy, EA = --- Iω , has been calculated
2
where I is the moment of inertia of the cross-section of the proposed
blade as depicted in Table. 1 and ω is the angular velocity (radians per
24,25
second) that can be converted from RPM experiment result. As
shown in Fig. 12, although the Model A shows the best performance
at the wind speed of 1.5 m/sec, Model A-1 and A-2 tend to demonstrate
compatible angular kinetic energies as the increase of the wind speed
around 4.0 m/sec. Finally we found the simplified standard model of
loop-type blade without sacrificing performance compared with
idealized model. There were no previous studies correctly explaining
the correlation between design parameters and blade performance in
Fig. 9 Front and top view of 3D blade model (a) and printed blade:
(b) Model A, (c) Model A-1, (d) Model A-2
Fig. 10 Cut-in wind speed of each blade model
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRECISION ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING-GREEN TECHNOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 4
terms of loop-type blade. Notably, this research has examined the
relationship between design variables and experimental performances
of loop-type blade based on the theoretical formulations. Other
researches suggested only optimal twist angle and blade width to
certify better performance of loop-type blade but we started research
with modified equations that fit to find optimal values for 3wings loop-
type blade and we presented ideal model calculated with analytic
method (Model A) and simplified models (Model A-1 and A-2)
making easy to produce. Because of these modified equations derived
from Betz’s law, we expect suggested model in this paper can reach
almost 59.3% energy coefficient that is maximum value of the kinetic
energy in wind. Therefore, it is possible to suggest an essential
procedure in the blade design of the loop type wind turbine, which is
verified with a sub-scale model producing by the 3D printing
Fig. 11 RPM of each blade model
Fig. 12 Angular kinetic energy of each blade model
Table 1 Specification of blades
Model A A-1 A-2
Weight (g) 24.05 24.27 24.21
Moment of inertia
1.75 × 10 2
1.77 × 10 2
1.74 × 10 2
(kg·mm ) 2
OCTOBER 2017 / 391
technology to demonstrate blade performance, simultaneously.
5. Conclusions
As a clean renewable energy, wind energy has been produced with
various kinds of generation methods since it produces unlimited
resources with chemical-free process. A loop-type turbine blade is a
core part since it does not only increase energy efficiency with low
noisy level, but also activate generation with low rotating speed.
In this study, we proposed the optimal profile of loop-type blade for
3 kW wind turbine based on basic design formulas in terms of TSR,
twist angle and chord length for loop-type blade. To validate the
performance and efficiency of the proposed blade design, it has been
produced with a polyjet 3D printing for a sub-scale model, which is
applied to a wind tunnel test. It is concluded that the simplified Model
A-2 demonstrates substantial performance and efficiency in energy
harvesting for the wind turbine compared with the analytical Model A
in spite of several assumptions for simplicity in manufacturing.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The first two authors (Mr. Youngwon Kim and Dr. Jeanho Park)
contributed equally to this work.
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