Case Study: American Wind achieves 20× faster CFD-driven micro wind turbine optimization with SimScale

American Wind used CFD with SimScale to optimize its micro wind turbines

American Wind, the developer of the MicroCube micro wind turbine (a 1 kW generator packed into just 3 inches in diameter), needed to verify and optimize a novel blade and stator design to ensure power capture at very low wind speeds. To supplement limited experimental tests and visualize detailed flow features across operating conditions, American Wind used SimScale’s cloud-based CFD platform.

Using SimScale, engineers ran high-fidelity CFD with a ~7 million-volume mesh and a Multiple Reference Frame rotor model to simulate the turbine across 26 operating conditions, running many cases in parallel to achieve up to 20× faster simulation turnaround and about $40k in avoided hardware costs. SimScale’s results—pressure, velocity, forces and moments—identified a recirculation region on the stator and quantified performance across low wind speeds, enabling targeted design changes to reduce energy losses and accelerate product development.

American Wind