On the accuracy of turbulence models for CFD simulations of vertical axis wind turbines

A comparative analysis of seven commonly-used eddy-viscosity turbulence models for CFD simulations of VAWTs is presented. The models include one- to four-equations, namely the Spalart-Allmaras (SA), RNG k-ε, realizable k-ε, SST k-ω, SST k-ω with an additional intermittency transition model (SSTI), k-k_l-ω and transition SST (TSST) k-ω models. In addition, the inviscid modeling is included in the comparison. The evaluation is based on validation with three sets of experiments for three VAWTs with different geometrical characteristics operating in a wide range of operational conditions, from dynamic stall to optimal regime and to highly-rotational flow regime. The focus is on the turbine wake, the turbine power performance, and the blade aerodynamics. High-fidelity incompressible unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) simulations are employed. The extensive analysis reveals high sensitivity of the simulation results to the turbulence model. This is especially the case for the turbine power coefficient C_P. The results show that the inviscid, SA, RNG k-ε, realizable k-ε and k-k_l-ω models clearly fail in reproducing the aerodynamic performance of VAWTs. Only the SST model variants (SST k-ω, SSTI and TSST) are capable of exhibiting reasonable agreement with all the experimental data sets, where the transitional SST k-ω versions (SSTI and TSST) are recommended as the models of choice especially in the transitional flow regime.