Improvement of wind turbine performance using a novel tip plate structure

Abstract In this study, the improvement of a horizontal-axis wind turbine performance is numerically studied using different configurations of tip plates. To do so, we independently develop a 3-D numerical code based on the finite volume method to solve the governing equations including the continuity and Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations using SST k-ω turbulence model. The NREL Phase VI blade is used as a target blade to suppress the induced drag of the blade tip vortices by the plates attached to the blade tips. The numerical results obtained indicate sixteen percent of power improvement in the two-blade horizontal axis wind turbine for the best tip plate configuration.