Dear Sandip,

The easiest way to establish the optimum tail vane area is to relate it to the sweep area of the turbine. The sweep area of a wind turbine simply the square of the rotor radius (R) times pi .

Sweep Area = R2 x pi

The rule of thumb, developed through many years of turbine design and testing, is that the tail area should be no less than 5% of the sweep area of the wind turbine’s blades. The larger the tail vane area the more influence it will have on maintaining proper rotor pointing. Below is a table of tail vane area vs. rotor radius for a range of small wind turbines.

To view the table, please use the following link:

https://www.windynation.com/jzv/inf/wind-turbine-tail-fin-sizing-your-wind-turbine-tail

Hoping this will be helpful,

Rafik

The sweep area of a wind turbine is the product of the square of the rotor radius (R) times pi [which is 3.1415].

Sweep Area = R2 x pi

As a rule of thumb, the tail area should be no less than 5% of the sweep area of the wind turbine’s blades.

Also, please note that the larger the tail vane area, the more influence it will have on maintaining proper rotor pointing.

Hope this helps answer your question.

Professor Yehia Khalil

Yale University

USA

Dear Yehia,

Your answer is exactly the same as the answer I gave 22 hours ago.

Rafik

Article Effect of Tail Shapes on Yawing Performance of Micro Wind Turbine

Dear Yehia and Rafik.

I conquer with you.

Sweep Area =pi X radius squared.