Design of a Wind Energy Capturing Device for a Vehicle

Due to the scarcity of fossil fuel in the future and its detrimental effect on the environmental, an alternative energy has to be discovered. Wind power is a clean and sustainable natural resource that has yet to be fully utilised in the automotive industry. The possibility of using a wind turbine on a vehicle was explored. However, the efficiency of a conventional wind turbine is limited. Therefore, a wind turbine system that consists of a diffuser shroud with a curved flange at the exit periphery was developed to overcome these weaknesses. The curve-flanged diffuser shroud has the role of collecting and accelerating the approaching wind, thus improving the efficiency of the wind turbine. In the numerical simulation, it was found that the curve-flanged diffuser shroud could accelerate the approaching wind speed by a factor of 2.1 and augment the power output of a wind turbine by 3 times. However, in the wind tunnel experiment, a velocity enhancement of 1.33 times was achieved and a power output augmentation of 2 times was demonstrated.