[Andy QUB]

Dear all,

I have just started a research project to simulate a horizontal axis marine current turbine using Fluent (& Gambit) and am trying to decide on the main concept for geometry creation and rotation. I'm just wondering if anyone has similar experience here, even for a HA wind turbine perhaps?

For example, is it best just to simulate one blade with periodic BCs or the whole turbine? (I'm mainly concerned with the turbine wake, not torque). Also should I use the sliding mesh method, rotating reference frame method, or are there other ways to include rotation?

Many thanks,
Andy

[mroberts]

Hi Andy,

Did you ever receive any advice on the best setup for your tidal turbine modelling? I want to model a similar situation and an looking for some steer, can you advise what you did?

Mat

[mp252]

Hi,
In my research project, I need to simulate a rotor being rotated as a result of forcing from the surrounding air flow. Hence in this case I don't know the rotation speed apriori, which should evolve as the flow changes. Can I do this kind of an analysis using sliding mesh? I haven't been succesful yet, by not specifying the rotation speed for the sliding mesh region and the mesh distorts significantly before the analysis crashes. I would appreciate any help in this regard.

Thanks,
Manoj

[husker]

Hi,

I modelled low speed propellers and as you guess it is like to model wind turbines.

To Andy:
I had use rotating frame and it was satisfying about the resulting torque. But if you can model with periodic BCs I suggest to do like that due to the computational resources. If you are interested in the wake you need a fine mesh. I also suggest you to do some hand calculating about the wake size. You can check related paper written by Adkins & Liebeck.

To Mroberts:
In wind turbine simulating, while you dont know the turbine RPM, it is required to couple it with the free stream velocity. You can initially guess RPM vs free stream values and then couple them. Try one RPM value with different free stream values and evaluate the results. Induce free stream values into 2, then re-simulate again. And again... Finally you should obtain one appropriate RPM and free stream.

Hope these helps

[mp252]

Hi Husker,
Thanks for your reply.

How did you do that? I found no way to not specify the constant rotation rate for the rotating mesh and still make it rotate based on the turbine movement. I am doing an FSI simulation, so the turbine rotates in solid mechanics software(Abaqus) and I know the instantaneous rotation rates at the center line. However I have no way to use this information in Fluent for next increment. How did you do that?

Thanks,
Manoj

[arezoo]

Greetings
I need help on how to connect the tidal turbine to pmsg generator
Thanks