scholarly journals Parametric Analysis Using CFD to Study the Impact of Geometric and Numerical Modeling on the Performance of a Small Scale Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine

Energies ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 505
Author(s):  
Muhammad Salman Siddiqui ◽  
Muhammad Hamza Khalid ◽  
Abdul Waheed Badar ◽  
Muhammed Saeed ◽  
Taimoor Asim

The reliance on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations has drastically increased over time to evaluate the aerodynamic performance of small-scale wind turbines. With the rapid variability in customer demand, industrial requirements, economic constraints, and time limitations associated with the design and development of small-scale wind turbines, the trade-off between computational resources and the simulation’s numerical accuracy may vary significantly. In the context of wind turbine design and analysis, high fidelity simulation under full geometric and numerical complexity is more accurate but pose significant demands from a computational standpoint. There is a need to understand and quantify performance deterioration of high fidelity simulations under reduced geometric or numerical approximation on a single small scale turbine model. In the present work, the flow past a small-scale Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) was simulated under various geometric and numerical configurations. The geometric complexity was varied based on stationary and rotating turbine conditions. In the stationary case, simple 2D airfoil, 2.5D blade, 3D blade sections are evaluated, while rotational effects are introduced for the configuration 3D blade, rotor only, and the full-scale wind turbine with and without the inclusion of a nacelle and tower. In terms of numerical complexity, the Single Reference Frame (SRF), Multiple Reference Frames (MRF), and the Sliding Meshing Interface (SMI) is analyzed over Tip Speed Ratios (TSR) of 3, 6, 10. The quantification of aerodynamic coefficients of the blade (Cl, Cd) and turbine (Cp, Ct) was conducted along with the discussion on wake patterns in comparison with experimental data.

2001 ◽  
Vol 123 (4) ◽  
pp. 272-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott J. Schreck ◽  
Michael C. Robinson ◽  
M. Maureen Hand ◽  
David A. Simms

Horizontal axis wind turbines routinely suffer significant time varying aerodynamic loads that adversely impact structures, mechanical components, and power production. As lighter and more flexible wind turbines are designed to reduce overall cost of energy, greater accuracy and reliability will become even more crucial in future aerodynamics models. However, to render calculations tractable, current modeling approaches admit various approximations that can degrade model predictive accuracy. To help understand the impact of these modeling approximations and improve future models, the current effort seeks to document and comprehend the vortex kinematics for three-dimensional, unsteady, vortex dominated flows occurring on horizontal axis wind turbine blades during non-zero yaw conditions. To experimentally characterize these flows, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Unsteady Aerodynamics Experiment turbine was erected in the NASA Ames 80 ft×120 ft wind tunnel. Then, under strictly-controlled inflow conditions, turbine blade surface pressures and local inflow velocities were acquired at multiple radial locations. Surface pressure histories and normal force records were used to characterize dynamic stall vortex kinematics and normal forces. Stall vortices occupied approximately two-thirds of the aerodynamically active blade span and persisted for nearly one-fourth of the blade rotation cycle. Stall vortex convection varied dramatically along the blade radius, yielding pronounced dynamic stall vortex deformation. Analysis of these data revealed systematic alterations to vortex kinematics due to changes in test section speed, yaw error, and blade span location.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (111) ◽  
pp. 201-211
Author(s):  
Mariana Montenegro Montero ◽  
Gustavo Richmond Navarro

This work presents the lift and drag coefficient curves, as functions of the angle of attack, for the NACA0012, S809 and SG6043 airfoils in turbulent flow conditions. The objective is to identify the airfoil with the best aerodynamic performance under conditions that are descriptive of small scale wind turbine. With the use of OpenFOAM, an analysis was done by numerical simulation. In the case of the NACA0012 airfoil, it was found that the performance is insensitive to the changes in turbulence and the Reynold number. The aerodynamic response of the S809 airfoil is to increase both the drag and lift as the turbulence increases. The SG6043 airfoil responds the best out of the three in turbulent flow, given that the lift curves mostly increase with the turbulence. The curves reported in this work are new and not found in previous literature. Keywords: aerodynamics, lift, drag, turbulence References [1]R. Madriz-Vargas, A. Bruce, M. Watt, L. G. Mogollón and H. R. Álvarez, «Community renewable energy in Panama: a sustainability assessment of the “Bocade Lura” PV-Wind-Battery hybrid power system,» Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability, vol. 2, nº 18, pp. 1-7, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1051/rees/2017040. [2]S. Mertenes, «Wind Energy in the Built Environment, » Ph.D. dissertation. Multi-Science, Brentwood, 2006. [3]P. Giguere and M. S. Selig, «New airfoils for small horizontal axis wind turbines,» Journal of Solar Energy Engineering-transactions, vol. 120, pp. 108-114, 1988. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.2888052. [4]A. K. Wright and D. H. Wood, «The starting and low wind speed behaviour of a small horizontal axis wind turbine,» Journal of wind engineering and industrial aerodynamics, vol. 92, nº 14-15, pp. 1265-1279, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jweia.2004.08.003. [5]G. Richmond-Navarro, M. Montenegro-Montero and C. Otárola, «Revisión de los perfiles aerodinámicos apropiados para turbinas eólicas de eje horizontal y de pequeña escala en zonas boscosas,» Revista Lasallista de Investigación, vol. 17, nº 1, pp. 233-251, 2020. https://doi.org/10.22507/rli.v17n1a22. [6]A. Tummala, R. K. Velamati, D. K. Sinha, V. Indraja and V. H. Krishna, «A review on small scale wind turbines, » Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews,vol. 56, pp. 1351-1371, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.027. [7]L. Pagnini, M. Burlando and M. Repetto, «Experimental power curve of small-size wind turbines in turbulent urban environment,» Applied Energy, vol. 154,pp. 112-121, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy. 2015.04.117. [8]W. D. Lubitz, «Impact of ambient turbulence on performance of a small wind turbine,» Renewable Energy, vol. 61, pp. 69-73, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2012.08.015. [9]P. Devinant, T. Laverne and J. Hureau, «Experimental study of wind-turbine airfoil aerodynamics in high turbulence, » Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, vol. 90, nº 6, pp. 689-707, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-6105(02)00162-9. [10]C. Sicot, P. Devinant, S. Loyer and J. Hureau, «Rotational and turbulence effects on a wind turbine blade. Investigation of the stall mechanisms,» Journal ofwind engineering and industrial aerodynamics, vol. 96, nº 8-9, pp. 1320-1331, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jweia.2008.01.013. [11]C. R. Chu and P. H. Chiang, «Turbulence effects on the wake flow and power production of a horizontal-axis wind turbine,» Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, vol. 124, pp. 82-89, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jweia.2013.11.001. [12]Y. Kamada, T. Maeda, J. Murata and Y. Nishida, «Visualization of the flow field and aerodynamic force on a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine in turbulent inflows,» Energy, vol. 111, pp. 57-67, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.05.098. [13]Q. A. Li, J. Murata, M. Endo, T. Maeda and Y. Kamada, «Experimental and numerical investigation of the effect of turbulent inflow on a Horizontal Axis WindTurbine (Part I: Power performance),» Energy, vol.113, pp. 713-722, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.06.138. [14]S. W. Li, S. Wang, J. P. Wang and J. Mi, «Effect of turbulence intensity on airfoil flow: Numerical simulations and experimental measurements,» Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, vol. 32, nº 8, pp. 1029-1038, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10483-011-1478-8. [15]S. Wang, Y. Zhou, M. M. Alam and H. Yang, «Turbulent intensity and Reynolds number effects on an airfoil at low Reynolds numbers,» Physics of Fluids, vol. 26, nº11, p. 115107, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4901969. [16]M. Lin and H. Sarlak, «A comparative study on the flow over an airfoil using transitional turbulence models, » AIP Conference Proceedings, vol. 1738, p.030050, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4951806. [17]Langley Research Center, «Turbulence Modelling Resource,» NASA, [Online]. Available: https://turbmodels.larc.nasa.gov/langtrymenter_4eqn.html. [Last access: 08 03 2021].


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
Yui-Chuin Shiah ◽  
Chia Hsiang Chang ◽  
Yu-Jen Chen ◽  
Ankam Vinod Kumar Reddy

ABSTRACT Generally, the environmental wind speeds in urban areas are relatively low due to clustered buildings. At low wind speeds, an aerodynamic stall occurs near the blade roots of a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT), leading to decay of the power coefficient. The research targets to design canards with optimal parameters for a small-scale HAWT system operated at variable rotational speeds. The design was to enhance the performance by delaying the aerodynamic stall near blade roots of the HAWT to be operated at low wind speeds. For the optimal design of canards, flow fields of the sample blades with and without canards were both simulated and compared with the experimental data. With the verification of our simulations, Taguchi analyses were performed to seek the optimum parameters of canards. This study revealed that the peak performance of the optimized canard system operated at 540 rpm might be improved by ∼35%.


Author(s):  
Ibtissem Barkat ◽  
Abdelouahab Benretem ◽  
Fawaz Massouh ◽  
Issam Meghlaoui ◽  
Ahlem Chebel

This article aims to study the forces applied to the rotors of horizontal axis wind turbines. The aerodynamics of a turbine are controlled by the flow around the rotor, or estimate of air charges on the rotor blades under various operating conditions and their relation to the structural dynamics of the rotor are critical for design. One of the major challenges in wind turbine aerodynamics is to predict the forces on the blade as various methods, including blade element moment theory (BEM), the approach that is naturally adapted to the simulation of the aerodynamics of wind turbines and the dynamic and models (CFD) that describes with fidelity the flow around the rotor. In our article we proposed a modeling method and a simulation of the forces applied to the horizontal axis wind rotors turbines using the application of the blade elements method to model the rotor and the vortex method of free wake modeling in order to develop a rotor model, which can be used to study wind farms. This model is intended to speed up the calculation, guaranteeing a good representation of the aerodynamic loads exerted by the wind.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 2649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Artur Bugała ◽  
Olga Roszyk

This paper presents the results of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the airflow for a 300 W horizontal axis wind turbine, using additional structural elements which modify the original shape of the rotor in the form of multi-shaped bowls which change the airflow distribution. A three-dimensional CAD model of the tested wind turbine was presented, with three variants subjected to simulation: a basic wind turbine without the element that modifies the airflow distribution, a turbine with a plano-convex bowl, and a turbine with a centrally convex bowl, with the hyperbolic disappearance of convexity as the radius of the rotor increases. The momentary value of wind speed, recorded at measuring points located in the plane of wind turbine blades, demonstrated an increase when compared to the base model by 35% for the wind turbine with the plano-convex bowl, for the wind speed of 5 m/s, and 31.3% and 49% for the higher approaching wind speed, for the plano-convex bowl and centrally convex bowl, respectively. The centrally convex bowl seems to be more appropriate for higher approaching wind speeds. An increase in wind turbine efficiency, described by the power coefficient, for solutions with aerodynamic bowls was observed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4.13) ◽  
pp. 74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhd Khudri Johari ◽  
Muhammad Azim A Jalil ◽  
Mohammad Faizal Mohd Shariff

As the demand for green technology is rising rapidly worldwide, it is important that Malaysian researchers take advantage of Malaysia’s windy climates and areas to initiate more power generation projects using wind. The main objectives of this study are to build a functional wind turbine and to compare the performance of two types of design for wind turbine under different speeds and behaviours of the wind. A three-blade horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) and a Darrieus-type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) have been designed with CATIA software and constructed using a 3D-printing method. Both wind turbines have undergone series of tests before the voltage and current output from the wind turbines are collected. The result of the test is used to compare the performance of both wind turbines that will imply which design has the best efficiency and performance for Malaysia’s tropical climate. While HAWT can generate higher voltage (up to 8.99 V at one point), it decreases back to 0 V when the wind angle changes. VAWT, however, can generate lower voltage (1.4 V) but changes in the wind angle does not affect its voltage output at all. The analysis has proven that VAWT is significantly more efficient to be built and utilized for Malaysia’s tropical and windy climates. This is also an initiative project to gauge the possibility of building wind turbines, which could be built on the extensive and windy areas surrounding Malaysian airports.  


Author(s):  
David Marten ◽  
Juliane Wendler ◽  
Georgios Pechlivanoglou ◽  
Christian Navid Nayeri ◽  
Christian Oliver Paschereit

A double-multiple-streamtube vertical axis wind turbine simulation and design module has been integrated within the open-source wind turbine simulator QBlade. QBlade also contains the XFOIL airfoil analysis functionalities, which makes the software a single tool that comprises all functionality needed for the design and simulation of vertical or horizontal axis wind turbines. The functionality includes two dimensional airfoil design and analysis, lift and drag polar extrapolation, rotor blade design and wind turbine performance simulation. The QBlade software also inherits a generator module, pitch and rotational speed controllers, geometry export functionality and the simulation of rotor characteristics maps. Besides that, QBlade serves as a tool to compare different blade designs and their performance and to thoroughly investigate the distribution of all relevant variables along the rotor in an included post processor. The benefits of this code will be illustrated with two different case studies. The first case deals with the effect of stall delaying vortex generators on a vertical axis wind turbine rotor. The second case outlines the impact of helical blades and blade number on the time varying loads of a vertical axis wind turbine.


Author(s):  
Dubravko Matijašević ◽  
Zdravko Terze ◽  
Milan Vrdoljak

In this paper, we propose a technique for high-fidelity fluid–structure interaction (FSI) spatial interface reconstruction of a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) rotor model composed of an elastic blade mounted on a rigid hub. The technique is aimed at enabling re-usage of existing blade finite element method (FEM) models, now with high-fidelity fluid subdomain methods relying on boundary-fitted mesh. The technique is based on the partition of unity (PU) method and it enables fluid subdomain FSI interface mesh of different components to be smoothly connected. In this paper, we use it to connect a beam FEM model to a rigid body, but the proposed technique is by no means restricted to any specific choice of numerical models for the structure components or methods of their surface recoveries. To stress-test robustness of the connection technique, we recover elastic blade surface from collinear mesh and remark on repercussions of such a choice. For the HAWT blade recovery method itself, we use generalized Hermite radial basis function interpolation (GHRBFI) which utilizes the interpolation of small rotations in addition to displacement data. Finally, for the composed structure we discuss consistent and conservative approaches to FSI spatial interface formulations.


Author(s):  
Nan Yan ◽  
Tyamo Okosun ◽  
Sanjit K. Basak ◽  
Dong Fu ◽  
John Moreland ◽  
...  

Virtual Reality (VR) is a rising technology that creates a computer-generated immersive environment to provide users a realistic experience, through which people who are not analysis experts become able to see numerical simulation results in a context that they can easily understand. VR supports a safe and productive working environment in which users can perceive worlds, which otherwise could be too complex, too dangerous, or impossible or impractical to explore directly, or even not yet in existence. In recent years, VR has been employed to an increasing number of scientific research areas across different disciplines, such as numerical simulation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) discussed in present study. Wind flow around wind turbines is a complex problem to simulate and understand. Predicting the interaction between wind and turbine blades is complicated by issues such as rotating motion, mechanical resistance from the breaking system, as well as inter-blade and inter-turbine wake effects. The present research uses CFD numerical simulation to predict the motion and wind flow around two types of turbines: 1) a small scale Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) and 2) a small scale Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT). Results from these simulations have been used to generate virtual reality (VR) visualizations and brought into an immersive environment to attempt to better understand the phenomena involved.


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