Bioinspired Fluid Dynamic Designs and Implementation of Soft Computing Techniques in Savonius Wind Turbine Rotors

Abstract

To address the problem of imminent energy crisis, pollution from fossil fuels, and global warming, it is necessary to incorporate the renewable technologies. In that context, the drag-based Savonius wind turbine has tremendous potential to extract wind energy and can be operated as a standalone system at remote areas where the conventional electricity cannot be provided. With such merits in mind, literature review is presented in this thesis besides the research directions and research gaps. It is found that the ongoing research directions are the bioinspired Savonius rotor designs, surrogate modelling, and optimization using soft computing techniques. Concise literature review on the reported bioinspired and nature-inspired blade design of the Savonius rotor is presented. Furthermore, applicability of using soft computing techniques for wind turbines, and especially for the Savonius rotor, is discussed. The potential research gaps are identified and are addressed in this thesis.