Authors - Matjere Matsebe, Nobubele Angel Shozi Abstract - It is possible to increase the acceptability of small wind turbines for wind regions with low wind velocities for rural as well as urban sectors by placing them inside diffusers. The research on development of various diffusers is a major re-search area nowadays. Curved flanged diffusers can deliver better performance by adding a cylindrical throat section between converging and diverging sections. This research paper presents a systematic study on short curved flanged diffusers with converging-diverging sections and extended uniform throat between them. Twenty-five diffuser models are studied using Computational Fluid Dynamics using ANSYS Fluent. These models are finalized using the design of experiments for six variables at five levels. The throat diameter for all diffuser models is fixed. The investigation is performed by considering radial average velocity and percentage velocity variation along the radial planes. The global velocities are observed as 1.18 to 1.47 times that of the radial average velocities. The diffuser dimensions are optimized to maximize radial average velocity and to minimize the velocity variation along the radial planes. The diffuser with optimized dimensions is manufactured and tested experimentally in a wind tunnel. Good matching is seen between the predicted results and experimental results. The optimized diffuser has the ability to produce more than two times the power that of the turbine without a diffuser.
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