Design on Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) for Low Wind Speed in Malaysia

Abstract

This project is about the design on vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) for low wind speed in Malaysia. The final design of wind turbine is tested using Computational Fluids Dynamic (CFD), a feature from the Solidworks software. Then the prototype was build according to the wind turbine final design specification. The prototype was tested using wind tunnel to measure the drag force and rotation per minute (rpm) in order to calculate the theoretical power output both from the simulation and the prototype. The calculations were made using formulas that was referred from the journal, website and reference books. Results from the calculation were defined to the efficiency in term of power and in term of simulation efficiency. The result was compared in finding the efficiency between the simulation and prototype. In this project, the vertical axis wind turbine can produce the power as the output and the efficiency of the prototype is more than 30% at the lowest wind speed.