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Under "Run Calculation", click on "Data File Quantities". Select "Vorticity Magnitude" from the list and click Ok.

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Run the simulation again so Fluent can retrieve the desired value. It will converge in 2 iterations. Close Fluent and Refresh the project.

Open CFD-Post and create a new contour. Name it "Vorticity Contours"

 

Tip speed ratio (TSR)

In practice, this is extracted directly from the Boundary Conditions, since we will essentially check that the velocity at the wall is zero. Therefore the purpose of this check is more to verify if we had correctly inputted the mathematical model into Fluent.

To calculate the TSR we first need to extract the velocity from CFD-Post. Since our reference is the value of velocity at r=0.04m, we need to find some way to extract the velocity of fluid particles in touch with the blade at that particular location.

One can plot the velocity vectors and read off the legend. However this is quite imprecise.

One of the ways to do this trick is to plot the velocity distribution along the X coordinate for the whole surface of the right blade, and then extract the value at x=0.04m. Since the "wall" entity is a closed line, the plot should also be circular. As the blade is rectangular, we should expect abrupt change in velocity very close to the maximum and minimum X. Let's do it!

First thing to do is to create a Polyline over the wall of the right blade. Select Location > Polyline

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Name it "wall right" and for "Method" select "Boundary Intersection". For "Boundary List" select "blade_right symmetry 1" and for "Intersection With", select "wall_blade_right". Click Apply.

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Next, insert a chart (Insert > Chart). Name it "Veloc at blade". Under "Data Series" tab, change the Location to the created "wall right".

Under "X Axis" tab, change the Variable to "X".

Under "Y Axis" tab, change the Variable to "Velocity in Stn Frame v". This is the velocity in the Stationary frame of reference (our interest. CFD Post uses the variable Velocity as relative to the rotating frames). We are taking only the y component because we know that the velocity of the blade should be only in the y direction at that location. Click Apply.

The chart should look like this. The point of interested is marked by the dashed lines. Also notice that at the edges of the plot there is an abrupt change in velocity, as expected. The "closed loop" plot expect is in fact happening, but the curve collapsed into a single line. You can she the curves separated if you choose "Velocity in Stn Frame" as Y Variable instead

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The point is slightly above the halfway between 0.165 and 0.170. Recall from pre-analysis that we calculated the expected value as 0.1676m/s. The value is virtually the same, indicating that we might have inputted the right mathematical model into the tool.

But we're not done! To calculate the TSR we still have to perform one short step. Recall that TSR=veloc blade/veloc wind, so all we have to do is divide the calculated velocity by 10m/s, the wind speed.

Contour".

For "Locations", do the same procedure as for the velocity contours (click on "..." and select all "[...] symmetry 1" zones).

For "Variable", select "Vorticity".

For "Range", change it to "User Specified", and change the value for Min to 0, and for Max to 2000 [s^-1].

Change the number of contours to 101.

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You should get something as the following figure.

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You can see the vorticity emanting from the tips of the blades. If you ever seen a video from a flow over a plate perpendicular to the direction of the flow, you might remember the vorticies being generated at the tips of the plate.

Also note that for the blade that is almost aligned with the flow, the vorticity does not propagate much (is less intense).

 

One could also plot some cool pictures for pressure (you will notice some relationship with the velocity contours) and for Turbulente Kinectic Energy (you will notice some relationship with the vorticity contours)So, our TSR is 0.01676. We will use this value to estimate the value of Cp.


Go to Step 7: Verification & Validation

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