Scaling of a wind turbine into a full-scale prototype with a self-regulating shield mechanism

Abstract

Lebanon has been suffering of many constraints since the end of the civil war in 1990. One of the main constraints is the absence of electricity throughout the day. Lebanese citizens are paying two bills: the first one is provided by EDL (Electricité du Liban) and the second from a private generator. Therefore, this thesis project is based on a continuous research study conducted at the University of Balamand to help the Lebanese society have electricity throughout the day by an Ecofriendly way that will not harm their surrounding environment. In this context, a Savonius-type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) has been investigated previously within a master project in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Balamand. A numerical analysis was conducted and the parameters were optimized to extract a power of 1 KW out of this turbine. In this work, the results obtained from the previous project were used to scale-up the Savonius wind turbine into a full-scale prototype with a self-regulating shield mechanism.