Towards a virtual platform for aerodynamic design, performance assessment and optimization of horizontal axis wind turbines
- Autores: Daniel Martínez Valdivieso
- Directores de la Tesis: Assensi Oliva Llena (dir. tes.), Carlos David Pérez Segarra (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2017
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Cristóbal Cortés Gracia (presid.), Joaquim Rigola Serrano (secret.), Antonio Pascau Benito (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Térmica por la Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
This thesis focuses on the study and improvement of the techniques involved on a virtual platform for the simulation of the Aerodynamics of Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines, with the ultimate objective of making Wind Energy more competitive.
Navier-Stokes equations govern Aerodynamics, which is an unresolved and very active field of research due to the current inability to capture the relevant the scales both in time and space for nowadays industrial-size machines (with rotors over 100 m in diameter). Therefore, there is a need to aim at a combination of engineering and scientific models. The structure of this thesis is designed in accordance to the previous fact, so there are clearly two parts or approaches within the conducted research: zero dimensional models and CFD based analysis.
For those zero-dimensional and (computationally) cheaper approach, the efforts done were the next: visualization and side improvements on the well known BEM code for pre-design purposes; designing an AeroElectric coupled algorithm to merge BEM with simple generator models that exclude details on electric circuits; designing a C++ code to study the dynamics of wind turbines coupling different component models; implementation of energy production based algorithms to optimize blades pre-designed with BEM, given the wind resources at the real location.
CFD-based analysis are meant to be the tools to design wind turbines in the future. Nowadays and for the years to come, they are and will be under ongoing research. The efforts done to this rescpect have been the next: exploration, implementation and analysis of Non-Inertial Reference Frame, Immersed Boundary Method, Sliding Meshes. Additionally, Adaptive Mesh Refinement and Wall Model LES methods have been explored too.
