An Actuator Surface Model to Simulate Vertical Axis Turbines

Lucy Massie, Pablo Ouro, Thorsten Stoesser and Qianyu Luo
Additional contact information
Lucy Massie: Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Pablo Ouro: Hydro-environmental Research Centre, School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK
Thorsten Stoesser: Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Qianyu Luo: Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-16

Abstract: An actuator surface model (ASM) to be employed to simulate the effect of a vertical axis turbine on the hydrodynamics in its vicinity, particularly its wake is introduced. The advantage of the newly developed ASM is that it can represent the complex flow inside the vertical axis turbine’s perimeter reasonably well, and hence, is able to predict, with a satisfying degree of accuracy, the turbine’s near-wake, with a low computational cost. The ASM appears to overcome the inadequacy of actuator line models to account for the flow blockage of the rotor blades when they are on the up-stream side of the revolution, because the ASM uses a surface instead of a line to represent the blade. The ASM was used on a series of test cases to prove its validity, demonstrating that first order flow statistics—in our study, profiles of the stream-wise velocity—in the turbine’s vicinity, can be produced with reasonable accuracy. The prediction of second order statistics, here in the form of the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), exhibited dependence on the chosen grid; the finer the grid, the better the match between measured and computed TKE profiles.

Keywords: actuator model; large-eddy simulation; vertical axis turbines; LES; ASM; VAT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4741/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4741/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:24:p:4741-:d:297210

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().