Optimization design and performance analysis of a bio-inspired fish-tail vertical axis wind rotor

[Display omitted] •A novel bio-inspired fish-tail vertical axis wind rotor is proposed.•The effect of key operation parameters on the fish-tail rotor performance is analyzed.•performance of the novel fish-tail rotor and savonius rotor are compared based on CFD.•The novel system owns obvious performance advantage over savonius rotor. To improve the wind power efficiency of the traditional Savonius rotor. Focusing on the influence of the blade characteristic parameters, a bio-inspired fish-tail wind rotor based on the two-bladed Savonius rotor is proposed. A series of transient simulations are performed to investigate the power coefficient of each rotor; The orthogonal experiments of four factors and three levels are carried out for the blade characteristic parameters, and a Box-Behnken Design (BBD) response surface model is constructed, which defines the relationship between the optimization objective power coefficient and the design parameters to explore the optimal results. The results show that the peak power coefficients for the response surface optimized rotor and the orthogonal experimental optimized rotor are 0.267 and 0.26, respectively. These values are improved by 9.4% and 6.6%when comparing the Savonius rotor. The performance analysis reveals that the blade number and minor arc have a more significant effect on the performance of the fish-tail wind rotor.