クリギングモデルを用いた小型垂直軸型風車のブレード翼形状およびソリディティ値の最適化

抄録

Airfoil shape, solidity, and number of airfoil blades are optimized for small vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) with the Kriging model. VAWT is one of the wind turbine types and has many advantages, e.g. flexibility for wind direction. The VAWT rotor blades are optimized by a global optimization approach based on a surrogate model. As the surrogate model, the ordinary Kriging model is utilized. The promising configuration is explored with the expected improvement criterion. In the optimization, the VAWT performance is evaluated by two dimensional (2D) unsteady computational fluid dynamics simulations using ANSYS Fluent. The rotor having two blades has greater performance than that having other numbers of blades under the specified design condition. The optimal configuration of the rotor is really manufactured using a 3D printer and then its performance is evaluated experimentally.