Journal of Engineering Science and Technology Vol. 12, No. 8 (2017) 2175 - 2186 © School of Engineering, Taylor’s University 2175 RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY (RSM) APPLICATION TOWARD THE PERFORMANCE OF A VERTICAL SHAFT HINGED ARC BLADE KINETIC TURBINE KENNIE A. LEMPOY*, RUDY SOENOKO, SLAMET WAHYUDI, MOCH AGUS CHOIRON Brawijaya University, Mechanical Engineering Department, Engineering Faculty, 65145, Malang Indonesia *Corresponding Author: klempoy@gmail.com Abstract Alternative energy sources are essentially inexhaustible for the foreseeable future, alternative energy is not only needed but to the energy transform from one form of energy to another form of energy without creating pollution that would damage the environment. One of these is the water potential energy, especially from rivers. In Indonesia especially the potential of river water is very much. On the river water, one of the enormous energy potential is the kinetic energy due to the flow speed and the flow rate when it can be utilized optimally then the energy crisis can be overcome. Kinetic turbine is one of the options in harnessing the kinetic energy potential in a form of flow rate. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is used in this research as design of experiment to obtain the optimum condition of each parameter. This study uses a kinetic turbine vertical shaft with eight arc blades. The kinetic turbine was made under a laboratory scale. The purpose of this study was to obtain an optimum condition for an arc bladed kinetic turbine performance. The Response Surface Methodology was used to obtain a turbine performance mathematical equation at an optimum condition. In this study, the independent variables used are the flow steering angle variations 30°, 40°and 50°; Flow rates of: 1.7; 2.2; 2.7 m/s; and turbine rotation of: 35, 45, 55 rpm. From the observation and analysis it is obtained a mathematical model with Y as the Turbine Power = 5.97 Watts; water flow steering angle X1 = 35,75º; a water flow rate X2 = 2.78 m/sec; and the turbine rotation X3 = 61.82 rpm. A turbine efficiency Full Quadratic models based on the response surface models analysis obtained a mathematical model too, where Y is the Turbine efficiency as big as 19.74%. Keywords: Water energy, Potential energy, Kinetic turbine, Response Surface Methodology.