Towards accurate CFD simulations of vertical axis wind turbines at different tip speed ratios and solidities

The accuracy of CFD simulations of vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) is known to be significantly associated with the computational parameters, such as azimuthal increment, domain size and number of turbine revolu- tions before reaching a statistically steady state condition (convergence). A detailed review of the literature, however, indicates that there is a lack of extensive parametric studies investigating the impact of the computational parameters. The current study, therefore, intends to systematically investigate the impact of these parameters, on the simulation results to guide the execution of accurate CFD simulations of VAWTs at different tip speed ratios (λ) and solidities (σ)…