Fundamental Study on Improvement of Performance of Wells Turbine

Abstract

The rotor of Wells turbine consists of several symmetrical airfoils positioned around a hub with their chord planes normal to rotational axis. In general, two-dimensional blade is used as the airfoil of Wells turbine. In the present paper the attention is focused on the effect of plasma actuator on stall characteristics of two-dimensional airfoil. We measured the lift characteristics acted on the airfoil with plasma actuator near the trailing edge of the airfoil. The stall attack angle of plasma actuator was larger than that of normal airfoil. The plasma actuator was effective to improve the stall characteristics of airfoil. This characteristics depended on the actuator location, the electrode length of plasma actuator. The stall attack angle of plasma actuator mounted on the suction side of airfoil was larger than that of pressure side.