Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Created using ANSYS 16.2

Learning Goals

In this tutorial, you will learn to:

• Determine the flow behavior over a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine
• Apply concepts of Moving Frame of Reference in FLUENT to simplify a transient problem into a steady state situation
• IN NEXTS: creating multiple parts mesh and use in Sliding Mesh

Problem Specification

Consider an uniform flow of V = 10m/s passing through a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) as sketched above. The VAWT has a diameter of 12cm and 3 blades, each one with a chord length of 2cm. For simplification, consider that it spins with a constant angular velocity of 40 RPM*

Simplification : No airfoil, but flat plat with 20deg angle of attack

Picture of an actual VAWT.

Drawing, explain the simplifications (2D, etc).

Specify diameter, number of blades, size of plates, angular velocity, incoming wind speed, 

Solve this problem numerically using ANSYS FLUENT. Present the following results: 

• Velocity magnitude contours 

• Pressure contours 

• Velocity profile at the outlet

• Torque

• NEXT: animation, etc

Describe what happen downstream of the turbine and think on how that would affect following turbines. Array.

 * Note that this is an important simplification. Here we're considering that the turbine is already spinning independently of the flow, what is clearly not true, since the flow is responsible for spinning the turbine. However, modeling the movement of a geometry caused by the flow is extremely advanced, and require use of a method called "6DOF solver". A tutorial on that will be made in the future. For now, let's stick simpler analysis, first a steady state picture of the problem (this tutorial), and later a transient analysis (future tutorial).

Go to Step 1: Pre-Analysis & Start-Up

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