Airborne Wind Turbine Aerodynamic Analysis, Paper Numerical Validation, ANSYS Fluent Training

Description

In this CFD Analysis, validation of the Paper ‘Aerodynamic Analysis of an Airborne Wind Turbine with Three Different Aerofoil-Based Buoyant Shells using Steady RANS Simulations‘ has been done by simulating the airborne part without the use of a turbine. The simulated pressure distribution has been compared with the paper. In this problem, the flow passes over the airborne at a speed of 25m/s.

To draw Airborne geometry from Design Modeler software, first, the surface of the shell and then the cross-section is drawn. In this simulation, NACA-9415 airfoil is used for the shell section, and NACA-0009 symmetrical airfoil is used for the blades.

The meshing of the current model is done by ICEM CFD software in a fully structured grid. The mesh type is hexahedra, and the element number is 859934.

Methodology: Airborne Wind Turbine

The k-ω SST turbulence model is used in this simulation. This model has been applied to obtain higher accuracy and reduced computation time.

Conclusion

Due to the use of the K-w turbulence model, the value of y+ must be below 1. This element has been increased slightly due to the structured and complex mesh. But still, the results are reliable and correct. The value of the pressure coefficient for the NACA-9415 airfoil is simulated and compared with the paper.

Finally, as seen in the chart above, the results have acceptable accuracy in comparison to Fig-18 in the paper, shown below.