Experimental study of the effect of slotted blades on the Savonius wind turbine performance

Abstract This study investigates the effect of Reynolds number on the performance of Savonius wind turbine with slotted blades. The turbine performance investigation was based on the torque coefficient (Ct), power coefficient (Cp), and tip speed ratio (TSR). The experiment used two number of blade configuration, blade overlap ratio of 10%, 12.5% and 20%, slotted position of 15%, 20%, 25% and 35%, and also slotted gap width of 3 mm, 5 mm, 7 mm, and 9 mm. The wind speed carried out in this experiment are 5.94 m/s, 6.46 m/s, 6.99 m/s, and 7.27 m/s, which are generated from the fan blowers as a wind source. The Savonius turbine with 10% overlap ratio shows the best performance. The highest Cp obtained is 0.138 by the variation of a 3 mm gap with Re of 1.44 × 104 and 0.526 tip speed ratio (TSR).