Title: OpenFOAM computation of interacting wind turbine flows and control (I): free rotating case

Authors: Goong Chen; Cong Gu; Hichem Hajaiej; Philip J. Morris; Eric G. Paterson; Alexey Sergeev

Addresses: Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA; Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA ' Keysight Technologies, Santa Clara, CA 95051, USA ' Department of Mathematics, California State University at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA ' Department of Aerospace Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA ' Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA ' Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA

Abstract: We develop high-fidelity blade resolved CFD for interacting turbine flows by the open source software OpenFOAM. Multi-turbine configurations are considered, aimed at a study of wind-turbine flows and their interactions. The preprocessing, coding, turbulence modelling and visualisation are discussed and described. An extension of our CFD work to a turbine operating in a two-phase flow is also included. Snapshots of interacting turbine flows are illustrated and dynamic motions can be viewed in animation videos. Two turbulence models, RANS k-ε and LES, were used.

Keywords: wind turbines; computational fluid dynamics; CFD; OpenFOAM; interactive flows; turbulence modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHM.2021.114169

International Journal of Hydromechatronics, 2021 Vol.4 No.1, pp.1 - 26

Received: 18 Mar 2020
Accepted: 09 Apr 2020
Published online: 12 Apr 2021 *

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