Wing turbine

motivation
Large amounts of research and resources are being spent today in order to harness the energy from wind effectively. Wind energy as a source of energy is being favored widely as an alternative to fossil fuels, as it is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and produces no greenhouse gas emissions.

Considerations
Wind turbine blades are shaped to generate the maximum power from the wind We performed 4 different analysis with 2 different variables
o Angle of attack o Blade profile

geometry
Case 1 blade profile 6 degrees to 3 degrees

geometry
Case 2 blade 8 degrees to 1 degree

mesh
First the solid was mesh in the software hypermesh with trias to simplify the fluid geometry with an element size of 15

Next we mesh the fluids

mesh
The fluid mesh has 5 layers and is more dense next to the turbine profile and larger as it goes away, this fluid represents the wind tunnel

Analysis
The analysis was perform in fluent with the following considerations

Chord length consideration

To get the forces of the model the chord length must be introduce in the reference values, this parameter is easy to compute if you are analyzing a wing toward the fluid but in this case there was 3 blades perpendicular to the fluid so the analysis was approximated with a chord length equal to the thickness of the blade perpendicular to the fluid

Analysis case 1
The analysis was perform with an angle of attack of 6 degrees (velocity vectors)

Velocity vector
The velocity vectors showed that in the edge of the blade the fluid velocity was higher this creates a low pressure profile that makes this blades move toward this direction

Analysis case 1
Here the pathline of the fluid is shown, and we can see how the fluid has higher velocity at the edges.

Analysis case 1
The pressure contour shows the impact of the air into the wind turbine, and the difference of pressure along the blade, which cause motion

Analysis case 1
Velocity profile after the impact with the blade

Forces report
Getting the force report the drag coefficient is about .2 per blade, the blades acts like a wall so the pressure force is a lot higher than the viscous forces.

The forces computed are cuantitative beacuse of the chord length consideration

Comparision beetwen cases 6 degrees

Case 1(6 dregree and 3 degree profile)

Case2 (8 dregree and 1 degree profile)

Drag force=70.6N

Drag force=74.72N

Comparison between cases 0 degrees

Case 11(6 dregrees and 3 degrees profile)

Drag force=71.57

Case 2 (8 dregrees and 1 degree profile)

Drag force=71.511

conclusion
We concluded that the angle of attack was the most important variable, because it increased the drag force considerably respect to the other variables but also needs to be combined with a correct wing profile to increase the amount of power is extracted from the wind. The analysis of the blades was not accurate in this project because more research must be perform to approached to a better chord length which will lead the results to a more precise model.