A numerical investigation into the effects of positioning and rotation on the performance of two vertical-axis hydrokinetic turbines
| dc.contributor.author | Soviak, Jody | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Kuhn, David (Mechanical Engineering) Zhang, Qiang (Bio-systems Engineering) | en_US |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Bibeau, Eric (Mechanical Engineering) Wang, Bing-Chen (Mechanical Engineering) | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2016-09-14T14:06:19Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2016-09-14T14:06:19Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2016 | |
| dc.degree.discipline | Mechanical Engineering | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Science (M.Sc.) | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Numerical simulation allows investigation into the influence of separation distance and rotation on the performance of two vertical-axis hydrokinetic turbines. Compu- tational fluid dynamics is applied to calulate the lift and drag coefficients acting upon interacting NACA 0021 turbine blades for a Reynolds number of Red = 10, 000. To understand the effect of separation distance, large-eddy simulation of the flow around side-by-side and staggered cylinders, ReD = 3,000, and airfoils, Rec = 3,000, are also performed. Based upon the simulations, a drag reduction of 11.3% and 19.8% is determined for the downstream cylinder and airfoil, respectively. A reduction in Reynolds stresses is also observed for the staggered configuration compared to the side-by-side configuration. Due to computational resources of large-eddy simulation, the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes method is also applied to investigate the influence of separation distance and rotation on two vertical axis hydrokinetic turbines. The numerical simulations show that a drag reduction of 15.5% occurs when the non-dimensional spanwise and streamwise separation distances, based on turbine diameter, reach 1 and 2, respectively. | en_US |
| dc.description.note | October 2016 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/31749 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | renewable energy, hydrokinetic turbines, turbine interactions, numerical, computational fluid dynamics, large eddy simulation | en_US |
| dc.title | A numerical investigation into the effects of positioning and rotation on the performance of two vertical-axis hydrokinetic turbines | en_US |
| dc.type | master thesis | en_US |