Proceedings of the ASME 2018
5th Joint US-European Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting
LIFT AND DRAG FORCES WITH RESPECT TO AZIMUTH POSITION OF A
DARRIEUS WIND TURBINE
Sajid Ali Sang-Moon Lee
Smart City Construction
Korea Institute of Civil
Engineering, University of
engineering and building
Science & Technology &
Technology, Goyang, Gyeonggi,
Korea Institute of Civil
Korea,
engineering and building
smlee82@kict.re.kr
Technology
Goyang, Gyeonggi, Korea
sajid_ali@kict.re.kr
ABSTRACT
Tangential force is the most important parameter for driving
the blade of a straight bladed H-Darrieus wind turbine forward.
The direction of this force is very critical as it may move the
blade forward (positive force) or it can also oppose the rotation
(negative force). The direction of tangential force depends upon
the distribution of two fundamental aerodynamic forces around
the wind turbine blade i.e. Lift and drag. Current study aims to
understand the impact of lift and drag forces on the tangential
force variation with respect to (w.r.t) azimuth position.
Commercial CFD software SC/tetra was employed in order to
solve the unsteady Reynold-averaged Navier stokes (URANS)
equations around the blades. Results show that very small
portion (maximum 20% during rotation) of the drag force is
actually converted into useful tangential force whereas rest of the
drag force is converted into either normal force or negative
tangential force (waste of energy). On the other hand, out of all
the generated lift force, 70-90 percent is seemed to be beneficial
for moving the blade forward and rest of the lift force also tries
to oppose the motion (almost 15%). Overall, it was found that
only 50-60 percent of the resultant force (lift + drag) acting on
the blade, is actually useful to move the blade forward. The study
was conducted at seven different tip speed ratios (TSRs) i.e. 1, 2,
2.28, 3, 3.5, 4 and 5 with NACA 0015 airfoil. Relatively higher
fluctuations were observed in the distribution of forces at low
values of TSRs (1 and 2) as compared to high values of TSRs (4
and 5). The results presented here are only limited to NACA
0015 whereas same methodology can be adopted for other blade
profiles in future as well.
INTRODUCTION
There are two major categories of vertical axis wind
turbines (VAWTs) named as Savonius and Darrieus. Savonius
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FEDSM2018
July 15-20, 2018, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
FEDSM2018-83192
Choon-Man Jang
Smart City Construction
Engineering, University of
Science & Technology &
Korea Institute of Civil
engineering and building
Technology
Goyang, Gyeonggi, Korea
jangcm@kict.re.kr
rotors use aerodynamic drag force to generate electricity whereas
Darrieus wind turbines are lift type wind turbines and use lift
force instead for same purpose. Generally it’s very hard to
optimally design a VAWT because of highly complex
aerodynamics association with such wind turbines such as
dynamic stall and continually changing wind’s angle of attack
(AoA). This is one of the reasons that VAWTs have lower
efficiency than their counter-parts i.e. horizontal axis wind
turbines (HAWTs). Small scale straight-bladed H-Darrieus wind
turbine is one of the VAWTs and it has the potential for
application at roof tops for domestic applications but currently
its efficiency is quite low, making it economically non-feasible
for such applications. In the early 1980s, it was very difficult to
study the complex aerodynamics of such wind turbines because
of absence of computing machines. But now, with the
availability of highly fast numerical tools such as computational
fluid dynamics (CFD), it has become easier to model such
problems. Few of the studies are mentioned below focusing on
the aerodynamics of H-Darrieus wind turbines using CFD.
Mohamed [1] tried to optimize the performance of H-
Darrieus rotor for wind energy conversion. In order to conduct
this study, he investigated the performance of twenty different
types of airfoils, both symmetric and non-symmetric, using a 2D
CFD model. He (Mohamed [1]) concluded that H-Darrieus rotor
having blades designed with airfoil shape of S-1046 would be
best for electricity generation in urban locations. Howell et al.
[2] and Claessens [3] carried out 2D and 3D CFD studies along
with experimental investigations of straight-bladed H-Darrieus
VAWT. 3D CFD results were found to be in a good agreement
with that of experimental data and, the impact of surface
roughness on aerodynamics of wind turbine, was also
considered. Howell et al. [4] studied the flow characteristics of a
Darrieus rotor using CFD and compared the power and torque
coefficients of all blades with wind tunnel experimental data.
Ponta et al. [5] tried a relatively complicated design of Darrieus
 rotor and compared its performance with classical straight- MATERIALS AND METHODS
bladed H-Darrieus rotor. But unfortunately, the overall Figure 2 shows the dimensions of computational domain
performance of this new and complex design didn’t show any and boundary conditions of the current CFD model. The center
improvements. Castelli and Benini [6] investigated the impact of of the wind turbine’s pole is 7.5D away from the inlet of domain,
airfoil thickness and shape on the performance of a straight- 20D away from the outlet in opposite direction and width of
bladed H-Darrieus rotor using a 2D CFD model. They performed domain is 15D (blockage ratio 6.66%), where “D” is the
unsteady Reynold’s average Navier stokes (URANS) rotational diameter of wind turbine in meters. Boundary
calculations and tried NACA 0012 and NACA 0021 as two conditions (BCs) have also been specified accordingly. Blades
different blade profiles. Sabaeifard et al. [7] investigated the best were stated as wall type BC; a vertical surface on the left of
configuration schemes of VAWTs using results of numerical domain is inlet (velocity type) BC; similarly, the vertical surface
simulations and they also compared the performance of two on the right of domain is outlet (pressure type) BC and finally,
different airfoils i.e. NACA 0018 and DUW airfoil. Similarly, the lateral surfaces of the domain were declared as a symmetry
many studies have also been conducted in order to further type BC.
understand the complex unsteady aerodynamics of VAWTs [8-
16].
The purpose of current study is to investigate the
characteristics of tangential force variations with azimuthal
position. Tangential force is the main source, driving the blade
of an H-Darrieus rotor in forward direction in order to produce a
positive torque output. Actually the production of tangential
force further depends upon the conversion of two basic
aerodynamic forces i.e. lift and drag. So it will also be very
exciting to focus on the conversion characteristics of lift and drag
forces into useful “forward directed” tangential force, which
ultimately results in positive values of blade’s tangential
velocity. By positive values, it means that the blade is moving in
forward direction hence producing a positive torque output and
VICE VERSA for negative values of tangential force. For this
purpose, a numerical model of a straight-bladed H-Darrieus
VAWT was created inside the commercial CFD software
SC/Tetra v12. Figure 1 shows the aerodynamic forces acting on FIGURE 2. CFD MODEL AND COMPUTATIONAL
the blades of an H-Darrieus wind turbine’s rotor whereas Ft is DOMAINS
the tangential force, Fn is the normal force and Rω is tangential
velocity of the turbine’s blade.
Similarly, Figure 3 shows the dimensions of the wind
turbine model. The blade profile is NACA 0015 having chord of
0.2 m and solidity is also same as chord length i.e. 0.2 m. Wind
turbine has a smooth shaft with a circular cross section having
radius of 0.01 m, which has the same rotational speed and
direction as the wind turbine.

(A) (B) (C)

FIGURE 3. GEOMETRIC DETAILS OF WIND TURBINE
MODEL USED IN CURRENT STUDY (A) ROTATIONAL
FIGURE AERODYNAMIC
1. FORCES ACTING ON
DIAMETER (B) HEIGHT (C) OVERALL MODEL.
DARRIEUS BLADES

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 TABLE 1. MESHING DETAILS accuracy for simulating highly turbulent flows. A filtering
Parameter Value process is applied to standard Navier-Stokes equations in order
Pre-processor SC/Tetra v12 to obtain LES Equations. The filtered Navier-Stokes equation
Mesh type tetrahedron and prism can be written as:
Number of total elements 13,097,886
Number of total nodes 3,507,891
( )
Number of prism layers (Turbine) 5 ( )
+ =− + 𝜇 + −𝜌 𝑢𝑢 −
Number of prism layers (Wall) 3
𝑢𝑢 (1)

where the last term i.e. 𝑢 𝑢 − 𝑢 𝑢 is called Reynolds stress

tensor 𝜏 . The calculation of turbulent eddy viscosity in LES
modelling depends upon the sub-grid scale (SGS) model
selected. In this paper, the Smagorinsky model for SGS modeling
will be deployed, due to its wide acceptance in academic
research community. According to this model, the Reynolds
stress tensor can be estimated by following set of equations:

(A) (B)
𝜏 = 𝑢 𝑢 − 𝑢 𝑢 = 2𝑣 𝑆̅ (2)
𝑣 = (𝐶 ) |𝑆̅| (3)
|𝑆̅| = 2𝑆̅ 𝑆̅ (4)

𝑆̅ = + (5)

where S is the strain rate, Cs is the Smagorinsky constant, and ∆

(C)
FIGURE 4. DETAILS OF THE COMPUTATIONAL
GRIDS (A) WHOLE DOMAIN (B) WIND
TURBINE ROTOR ONLY (C) DETAILS AROUND
AIRFOIL.
A very high resolution, unstructured and non-conformal mesh
was created for all blades. In order to capture the complex flow
phenomenon around the blades, 5 layers of inflation were
generated near the blade surface having growth rate of 1.2. Apart
from the regions near the blades, rest of the domains were mostly
meshed using tetrahedron and prism elements. Triangular
elements, having coarsened growth rate of 1.2, were used to
mesh the bounding box. Table 1 contains a brief information
about the meshing characteristics.
Figure 4 shows the discretization of whole domain, around
rotor and inflations layers applied near blade walls.
For modeling turbulence, large eddy simulation (LES) will be
adopted in current study. LES has been widely used by research
community around the globe for last few decades due to its high
is the filter width and it is computed based on the cell grid-size,
so, ∆ = (∆i ∆j∆k)1/3, where, i, j and k are directions. The value of
constant Cs varies for different types of flows, however, in the
literature, its value varies from Cs = 0.065 to Cs = 0.25 for single-
phase flows. For this work, a Cs value of 0.15 is used.
The simulations were carried out in transient mode in order to
take into account highly complex unsteady phenomenon such as
interaction of wake with rotating blades and particularly
dynamic stall. For gradients, a least-squares cell based algorithm
was adopted whereas in order to solve all the equations related
to turbulence, pressure and momentum, a 2nd-order upwind
spatial discretization algorithm was utilized. Similarly for
transient algorithms, a 2nd-order implicit formulation was
employed. Such 2nd-order algorithms are very well known for
minimizing the interpolation errors in numerical diffusion. If the
residuals of all the flow variables were less than 10-5, this was
considered to be a converged solution. The increment in the
azimuthal position (dθ) was kept as low as 0.1° for the more
detailed and accurate calculations of unsteady simulations. The
turbulence intensity (TI) in the upcoming free stream wind at the
inlet BC of the domain was 5% and large eddy simulations (LES)
was adopted as turbulence model. Commercial CFD software
SC/Tetra was utilized in order to carry out all simulations. Table
2 contains a summary of the settings to run transient simulations.

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 TABLE 2. ANALYSIS CONDITIONS In order to obtain accurate results from a computational
Parameter Value study, it is of immense importance to first validate/compare the
Processor SC/Tetra v12 CFD results with highly accurate experimental data. For this
Analysis type Transient analysis purpose, current CFD model was also validated against
Time step size 0.1°/cycle each case experimental data and the results are shown in Figure 6. The
Fluid model Incompressible air experimental data was obtained from a real wind turbine, having
Density, kg/m3 1.206 exactly the same dimensions as current CFD model, installed at
Viscosity, Pa.s 0.0000183 Deokjeok Island in South Korea (latitude: 37.22°, longitude:
Cp, j/kg.K 1007 126.15°). The results show a good agreement between current
Thermal conductivity, W/m.K 0.0256 CFD model and experimental data with less than 10% difference.

FIGURE 5. DEFINITION OF BLADE NUMBERS

AND 0° AZIMUTHAL POSITION

(A) (B)
FIGURE 6. NUMERICAL SIMULATION VALIDATION
WITH EXPERIMENTAL DATA (A) RPM (B) POWER
COEFFICIENT

Figure 5 defines the blade numbers and zero degree

azimuthal position, as it is very important to clear at this point, FIGURE 7. CONVERSION CHARACTERISTICS OF
because the results are prepared only for blade 1 and at critical AERODYNAMIC FORCES WITH AZIMUTHAL POSITION
azimuthal positions only. FOR BLADE 1 AT MULTIPLE TSRs

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 TABLE 3. MEAN VALUES OF BLADE 1 FOR ONE
COMPLETE REVOLUTION
Tangential Tangential Total Power
Drag Lift
TSR Drag Lift Tangential Coefficient
[N] [N]
[N] [N] [N] [-]
1 0.23 18.06 0.01 7.45 7.46 0.01
2 0.61 30.32 0.03 19.87 19.90 0.07
2.28 0.76 33.24 0.05 25.15 25.20 0.10
3 1.22 48.41 0.08 46.01 46.09 0.12
3.5 2.39 117.59 0.11 117.52 117.63 0.31
4 1.82 80.42 0.10 80.29 80.39 0.23
5 1.53 64.41 0.10 64.22 64.32 0.20

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The instantaneous conversion characteristics of generated
lift and drag forces into tangential force were being studied at (A)
multiple TSRs and the results are reported in Figure 7. The
results have only been prepared for only blade number 1 at this
stage because rest of the blades were seemed to have similar
behavior and therefore not presented here.
As it seen in the figures that overall, lift is the main force
for generating the “positive” tangential force on the blade as
compared to drag force. The portion of drag force is so small that
it might be ignored while comparing with its counter-part i.e. lift
force. The most part of the generated drag is actually converted
into normal force, which tries to put compression or extension
stress on the ball bearings. Coming back to the lift, the magnitude
of tangential force increases with TSR until a value of 3.5 and
after that it again starts to drop. Whereas on the other hand the
peak value of normal force seems to have constant value of
approximately 15N except at TSR values of 1 and 3.5. Apart
from magnitude of forces, relatively lower fluctuations were
observed at higher values of TSRs especially at 3.5 (optimum (B)
TSR).
Table 3 presents a summary of the average values of
important aerodynamic parameters for blade 1 during one
complete revolution at all values of TSRs. By the term
“tangential drag” it means that the tangential force produced due
to drag and similarly, “tangential lift” means that tangential force
produced due to lift. It seems that tangential lift is significantly
greater than tangential drag at all values of TSRs. Generally,
average values of total tangential force increase with TSR and
the maximum value occurs at TSR 3.5, after that it starts to
decrease. As shown in the table, it is clear that the highest value
of power coefficient (0.31) also occurs at TSR 3.5, so this value
is considered as optimum TSR and it is also highlighted in the
Table 3.
In order to physically visualize the flow characteristics around
the blades, 2D colour contours of vorticity and velocity have been
(C)
prepared and are shown in Figures 8. As the whole analysis was
FIGURE 8. VORITICITY AND VELOCITY CONTOURS AT
carried out only for blade 1, so it’s better to show contours only for
CRITICAL AZIMUTHAL POSITION FOR BLADE 1 (A)
this blade. The contours have been prepared only for lower values
TSR 1 (B) TSR 2 (C) TSR 3.5 (OPTIMUM)
of TSRs (1 and 2) and for optimum value of TSR (3.5) so that a
comparison can be made among different TSRs.

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 As shown in Figures 7 that the azimuthal positions from 40°-
160° are of critical importance, so four values were selected to
prepare contours from this range with a difference of 30°.
As shown in Figure 8(A) that a vortex starts to form at
azimuthal position of 60°, which develops during 90° to 120° and
finally detaches from the surface of blade around 150°. Similar
phenomenon can also be observed in Figure 8(B) as well for TSR
value of 2. This type of flow separation makes the rotation of blades
somehow unstable, affecting the performance of wind turbine and
hence causes the loss in power coefficient.
Whereas on the other hand, no flow separation from the blade was
being observed at the optimum value of TSR (3.5), making it
possible to sustain an almost constant value of tangential velocity
as shown in Figure 8 (C). This type of behaviour at elevated TSRs
enhances the performance of wind turbine and therefore the highest
power coefficient occurs at TSR value of 3.5.
CONCLUSIONS
The aim of the current study is to analyse the conversion
characteristics of two basic aerodynamic forces i.e. lift and drag
into tangential force for a straight bladed H-Darrieus VAWT.
Tangential force is the main force which drives the blades of such
wind turbines in forward direction. For this purpose, a CFD model
of the wind turbine was created and simulations were carried out
for a single blade at seven different TSRs. The current numerical
model was compared with experimental results and both were
found to be in good agreement.
The analysis showed that lift is the main force for producing
“positive tangential force”. Specifically speaking, at low values of
TSRs i.e. 1, 2, and 2.28, almost 70% of the instantaneous generated
lift is converted into tangential force and rest of the lift (30%),
makes the normal component of force. Whereas at optimum TSR
(3.5) and above, more than 95% of lift is converted into tangential
force and therefore improves the power performance of the wind
turbine. On the other hand, drag produces a very small amount of
tangential force and even it can be ignored if compared against lift
force. For a single blade during one complete revolution at
optimum value of TSR, the average values of total tangential force
and power coefficient were 117.63 N and 0.31, respectively. The
2D colour contours of vorticity and velocity showed that at low
values of TSR, flow separates from the blade and creates a vortex
at critical azimuthal positions. This phenomenon can be associated
with the poor power performance of such wind turbines at low
TSRs. Whereas on the other hand, no such flow separation was
observed at optimum TSR, therefore allowing the blades to rotate
faster, smoother and improving the average value of power
coefficient for a single blade.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was supported with major project funding from
the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building
Technology.
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