Vertical Axis Wind Turbine-Part 2

Humans utilize both renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy daily for power generation. With increased demands for clean energy as well as technological advancement bringing the overall costs down, the renewable power sector is thriving. Solar, wind, and hydro are some main sources of renewable power. For example, wind turbines utilize and convert the kinetic energy of the wind into electrical energy. The blades of the wind turbine catch the wind, and the aerodynamic forces (lift force) generated on these blades turn the rotor on which these blades are mounted. At low wind speeds, the flow around turbine blades is typically steady. But as the wind speed increases, the flow behavior around blades becomes transient. This creates vortices in the flow. To increase the efficiency of these turbines, a design engineer must consider the flow behavior around these blades and estimate the aerodynamic forces developed by the flowing wind. Engineering simulations are commonly used to estimate these aerodynamic forces.

This SimCafe course was developed by Dr. Rajesh Bhaskaran, Swanson Director of Engineering Simulation at Cornell University, and Julio Sampaio Gabriel de Pieri, in partnership with Ansys. It serves as an e-learning resource to integrate industry-standard simulation tools into courses and provides a resource for supplementary learning outside the classroom. In this course, we will use the transient sliding mesh approach to model the vertical axis wind turbine using Ansys Fluent and study the unsteady flow behavior around its blades.

For more ways to learn, check out the Cornell edX course, A Hands-on Introduction to Engineering Simulations at ansys.com/cornell.

Cornell University also offers a Fluid Dynamics Simulations Using Ansys online certificate authored by Dr. Rajesh Bhaskaran. Learn more here: https://ecornell.cornell.edu/fluiddynamics

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