scholarly journals Modelling of a hydrokinetic energy converter for flow-induced vibration based on experimental data

2018 ◽  
Vol 155 ◽  
pp. 392-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenhua Wu ◽  
Hai Sun ◽  
Baicheng Lv ◽  
Michael M. Bernitsas
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarina Yuen ◽  
Senad Apelfröjd ◽  
Mats Leijon

At Uppsala University, a research group is investigating a system for converting the power in freely flowing water using a vertical-axis turbine directly connected to a permanent magnet generator. An experimental setup comprising a turbine, a generator, and a control system has been constructed and will be deployed in the Dalälven river in the town of Söderfors in Sweden. The design, construction, simulations, and laboratory tests of the control system are presented in this paper. The control system includes a startup sequence for the turbine and load control. These functions have performed satisfactorily in laboratory tests. Simulations of the system show that the power output is not maximized at the same tip-speed ratio as that which maximizes the turbine power capture.


2019 ◽  
Vol 183 ◽  
pp. 426-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Giorgi ◽  
Josh Davidson ◽  
Morten Jakobsen ◽  
Morten Kramer ◽  
John V. Ringwood

1988 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Kistler ◽  
J. M. Chenoweth

A unique set of heat exchanger shellside pressure drop experimental data has become available from experiments at Argonne National Laboratory as a part of an ongoing research program in flow-induced vibration. These data provide overall pressure drop for a number of typical industrial heat exchanger configurations in addition to incremental pressure drop measurements along the shellside path. The test program systematically varied the baffle spacing, the tubefield pattern, and nozzle size for a series of isothermal water tests for segmentally baffled bundles. Also recently a comprehensive method has been published in the Heat Exchanger Design Handbook (HEDH) for the prediction of bundle shellside pressure drops. A search of the literature failed to reveal a complementary method for predicting the shellside nozzle pressure losses. This paper compares the predicted with the measured data and validates the adequacy and limitations of the HEDH method for full bundles of plain tubes. It further applies an extension to the method for no-tubes-in-the-window bundles. Adjustments were indicated to improve the predictions for finned tubes and methods were developed to predict shellside nozzle pressure drops. Overall pressure drop predictions were within plus or minus 20 percent.


Author(s):  
Nathan Tom ◽  
Kelley Ruehl ◽  
Francesco Ferri

This paper details the development and validation of a numerical model of the Wavestar wave energy converter (WEC) developed in WEC-Sim. This numerical model was developed in support of the WEC Control Competition (WECCCOMP), a competition with the objective of maximizing WEC performance over costs through innovative control strategies. WECCCOMP has two stages: numerical implementation of control strategies, and experimental implementation. The work presented in this paper is for support of the numerical implementation, where contestants are provided a WEC-Sim model of the 1:20 scale Wavestar device to develop their control algorithms. This paper details the development of the numerical model in WEC-Sim and of its validation through comparison to experimental data.


Author(s):  
Wanhai Xu ◽  
Chunning Ji ◽  
Hai Sun ◽  
Wenjun Ding ◽  
Michael M. Bernitsas

Flow-induced vibration (FIV), primarily vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) and galloping have been used effectively to convert hydrokinetic energy to electricity in model-tests and field-tests by the Marine Renewable Energy Laboratory (MRELab) of the University of Michigan. The developed device, called VIVACE (VIV for Aquatic Clean Energy), harnesses hydrokinetic energy from river and ocean flows. One of the methods used to improve its efficiency of harnessed power efficiency is Passive Turbulence Control (PTC). It is a turbulence stimulation method that has been used to alter FIV of a cylinder in a steady flow. FIV of elastically mounted cylinders with PTC differs from the oscillation of smooth cylinders in a similar configuration. Additional investigation of the FIV of two elastically mounted circular cylinders in staggered arrangement with a low mass ratio in the TrSL3 flow-regime is required and is contributed by this paper. A series of experimental studies on FIV of two PTC cylinders in staggered arrangement were carried out in the recirculating water channel of MRELab. The two cylinders were allowed to oscillate in the transverse direction to the oncoming fluid flow. Cylinders tested have, diameter D = 8.89cm, length L = 0.895m and mass ratio m* = 1.343. The Reynolds number was in the range of 2.5×104<Re<1.2×105, which is a subset of the TrSL3 flow-regime. The center-to-center longitudinal and transverse spacing distances were T/D = 2.57 and S/D = 1.0, respectively. The spring stiffness values were in the range of 400<K<1200N/m. The values of harnessing damping ratio tested were ζharness = 0.04, 0.12, 0.24. For the values tested, the experimental results indicate that the response of the 1st cylinder is similar to a single cylinder; however more complicated vibration of the 2nd cylinder is observed. In addition, the oscillation system of two cylinders with stiffer spring and higher ζharness could initiate total power harness at a larger flow velocity and harness much higher power. These findings are very meaningful and important for hydrokinetic energy conversion.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 717
Author(s):  
Iro Malefaki ◽  
Efstathios Konstantinidis

Vortex-induced oscillations offer a potential means to harness hydrokinetic energy even at low current speeds. In this study, we consider a novel converter where a cylinder undergoes angular oscillations with respect to a pivot point, in contrast to most previous configurations, where the cylinder undergoes flow-induced oscillations transversely to the incident free stream. We formulate a theoretical model to deal with the coupling of the hydrodynamics and the structural dynamics, and we numerically solve the resulting nonlinear equation of cylinder motion in order to assess the performance of the energy converter. The hydrodynamical model utilizes a novel approach where the fluid forces acting on the oscillating cylinder are split into components acting along and normal to the instantaneous relative velocity between the moving cylinder and the free stream. Contour plots illustrate the effects of the main design parameters (in dimensionless form) on the angular response of the cylinder and the energy efficiency of the converter. Peak efficiencies of approximately 20% can be attained by optimal selection of the main design parameters. Guidelines on the sizing of actual converters are discussed.


2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Longatte ◽  
Z. Bendjeddou ◽  
M. Souli

Most classical fluid force identification methods rely on mechanical structure response measurements associated with convenient data processes providing turbulent and fluid-elastic forces responsible for possible vibrations and damage. These techniques provide good results; however, they often involve high costs as they rely on specific modelings fitted with experimental data. Owing to recent improvements in computational fluid dynamics, numerical simulation of flow-induced structure vibration problems is now practicable for industrial purposes. As far as flow structure interactions are concerned, the main difficulty consists in estimating numerically fluid-elastic forces acting on mechanical components submitted to turbulent flows. The point is to take into account both fluid effects on structure motion and conversely dynamic motion effects on local flow patterns. This requires a code coupling to solve fluid and structure problems in the same time. This ability is out of limit of most classical fluid dynamics codes. That is the reason why recently an improved numerical approach has been developed and applied to the fully numerical prediction of a flexible tube dynamic response belonging to a fixed tube bundle submitted to cross flows. The methodology consists in simulating at the same time thermo-hydraulics and mechanics problems by using an Arbitrary Lagrange Euler (ALE) formulation for the fluid computation. Numerical results turn out to be consistent with available experimental data and calculations tend to show that it is now possible to simulate numerically tube bundle vibrations in presence of cross flows. Thus a new possible application for ALE methods is the prediction of flow-induced vibration problems. The full computational process is described in the first section. Classical and improved ALE formulations are presented in the second part. Main numerical results are compared to available experimental data in section 3. Code performances are pointed out in terms of mesh generation process and code coupling method.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document