Renewable Energy – ANSYS Fluent Training Package, 10 Practical Exercises for INTERMEDIATE Users

Renewable Energy – ANSYS Fluent Training Package, 10 Practical Exercises for INTERMEDIATE Users

This training package, including 10 different practical exercises for INTERMEDIATE users, insets Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods and materials for designing, simulating, and dissecting applied and Renewable Energy Engineering CFD projects, with practical experiments using ANSYS Fluent software.

Solar Heat Exchanger

At first, we start this training package with a practical exercise about Solar Heat Exchangers, since this kind of heat exchanger uses solar energy as one of the major renewable energy sources. This system consists of two parts; So that the water flow moves in the central part of the heat exchanger and the airflow is in the gap installed in the front plate of the heat exchanger. The water flow enters the heat exchanger at a speed of 4 m.s-1 and a temperature of 30 ° C and leaves the heat exchanger at atmospheric pressure.

The other 9 practical exercises of this renewable energy engineering training package relate to various kinds of wind turbines that use wind energy as one of the major renewable energy sources.

Turbine

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT)

Helical

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) is becoming ever more important in wind power generation thanks to its adaptability for domestic installations. Practical exercise number 2 is going to simulate an airflow field close to a vertical axis HELICAL wind turbine. This paper aims to investigate the behavior of airflow and pressure distribution and study drag force.  In practical exercise number 3, we are simulating a SMALL SCALE Helical wind turbine with dimensions of 10 x 20 cm with an average diameter of 7 cm. This simulation was performed at wind speeds of 2 m / s and speeds of 60, 40, 80, 100, and 120 rpm, and torque was reported as output. Small scale wind turbines can be used in places such as subways and tunnels, and spaces where there is a lot of wind production, but the dimensions of the environment are limited.

Darrieus

Project number 4 is going to simulate an airflow field close to a vertical axis DARRIEUS wind turbine. The geometry included a rotary zone for the turbine walls and a stationary zone for the rest of the domain. The inlet is considered to wind with 1 m/s, and the turbine zone is rotating with 120 RPM. Problem number 5 compares the airflow passing over two H-type Darrieus wind turbines of plain and serrated airfoils. In this project, the airflow enters the computational domain with a velocity of 7m/s, and we apply the RNG k-epsilon model to solve the turbulent flow equations. Also, it should be noted that the Mesh Motion option was enabled to simulate the rotating motion of turbine blades, and the rotation velocity of the rotating domain was set to 2.8285 rad/s.

Savonius

In project number 6, a 2-D two-blade Savonius wind turbine has been simulated using moving mesh, and then the results were investigated. Air enters fluid computational domain from inlet with 10m/s velocity while turbine rotating with a constant angular velocity of 10rpm. Our final goal is to illustrate the pressure and velocity distribution and fluid motion animation behind the turbine. In practical exercise number 7, a 3-D two-blade Savonius wind turbine has simulated using sliding mesh, and then the results were investigated. Air enters fluid domain from inlet with 10m/s velocity while turbine rotating with a constant angular velocity of 40rpm. An essential feature of these turbines is receiving wind from all directions.

Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT)

Fortunately, it is known that HAWTs have higher efficiency compared to VAWTs. Project number 8 is going to simulate an airflow field close to a STANDARD horizontal axis wind turbine.  The inlet is considered to wind with 1 m/s, and the turbine zone is rotating with 16 RPM. Practical exercise number 9 will study an incompressible isothermal airflow close to a standard horizontal axis wind turbine considering TURBINE BASE. The geometry is a wind turbine with a 30-meter base inside a 300-meter wind tunnel. Also, we select the maximum speed of 1 m/s is for the wind and the turbine velocity of 30 RPM.

Wind Farm

Finally, problem number 10 simulates HAWT with the series arrangement in a WIND FARM. In this project, four wind turbines are designed in a row in a specific computational domain of ​​a large field called a wind farm (turbine farm). To simulate the rotational motion of turbines in this project, the Frame Motion method has been used.

You can obtain Geometry & Mesh file and a comprehensive Training Movie that presents how to solve the problem and extract all desired results.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]