Abstract
The Magnus effect was first described by a German physicist H. G. Magnus in 1853. Then, A Flettner had utilized the Magnus effect to make ship propel and his rotor-ship made a successful voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1926. Moreover, recently, wind turbines also utilizing the Magnus effect are appeared in Russia and Japan. Akita Magnus Association in Japan has developed the Magnus wind turbine.
Although they proved that the Magnus effect could rotate a wind turbine, their cylindrical rotors were necessary to rotate by an electric motor. Therefore, the authors proposed a Magnus wind turbine which utilizes Savonius wind turbines of high aspect ratio instead of the cylinders, since the Savonius wind turbines rotate without using electricity.
In this paper, the authors report a result of an experimental performance test of the Savonius type Magnus wind turbines in a wind tunnel. As the experimental results, characteristics of the Savonius type Magnus wind turbines were made clear for various parameters.
