Wind Turbine Considering Turbine Base 3-D Simulation

Description

Wind Turbine (3-D) Considering Turbine Base, ANSYS Fluent Simulation Training

This project will study an incompressible isothermal airflow close to a standard horizontal axis wind turbine considering its base using ANSYS Fluent software.

Standard Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) is becoming increasingly important in wind power generation. Fortunately, it is known that HAWTs have higher efficiency compared to VAWTs.

Thus, they have been employed in open fields and can produce energy from the wind. We carry out the model’s meshing using ANSYS Meshing software. The element number is 1981472.

Wind Turbine Methodology

This project will study an incompressible isothermal airflow close to a standard horizontal-axis wind turbine. 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 for the wind. Furthermore, the frame motion technique is exploited to model the HAWT blades rotating motion, and the rotating turbine velocity is set to 30 RPM.

Moreover, the SST k-omega model is used to solve turbulent fluid equations due to its advantage in predicting flow patterns near and far from the blades’ surfaces.

Wind Turbine Conclusion

After the solution process, two-dimensional contours related to the velocity and pressure are obtained. The leading edge of the turbine wall corresponded to the lowest pressure, which is logical since the velocity has the highest value on the tip of the blade.

We depicted both contours and streamlines for the velocity field to get much insight into the problem. Briefly, the velocity field adjacent to the wall of the turbine has the highest gradient.

Additionally, the streamlines illustrate the quality of the flow streams resolved in the wake section, which is the core challenge of aerodynamic simulation. Finally, we have found that the drag force is 1.067 (kN), which was accurate for a wind turbine with a 30-meter base with the noted specifications.