To invest the condition of ice accretion on the blade used for straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine （SB-VAWT）, wind tunnel tests were carried out on a blade with NACA0015 airfoil by using a small simple icing wind tunnel. Tests were carried out at some typical attack angles under different wind speeds and flow discharges of a water spray with wind. The icing shape and area on blade surface were recorded and measured, Then the numerical computation was carded out to calculate the lift and drag coefficients of the blade before and after ice accretion according to the experiment result, the effect of icing on the aerodynamic characteristics of blade were discussed.
Icing on blade surface of the straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine(SB-VAWT)set in cold regions is a serious problem.To study the performance effects of icing on SB-VAWT,numerical simulations were carried out on the ice accretion on NACA 0015 airfoil which was always used for blade airfoil of SB-VAWT by CFD methods based on 2D steady incompressible N-S Equation.The morphology and procedure of icing on blade airfoil were obtained under different wind speeds,attack angles of blade and water flow flux in wind.The static flow fields,especially the static pressure fields around blade airfoil with or without icing on it were computed.The aerodynamic characteristics including the lift and drag force coefficients of blade airfoil were also calculated.The results indicated that icing caused the static pressure field changed greatly and led to the increasing of drag force and reducing the aerodynamic performance.
