28.09.2022
ABOUT ENG401 GROUP FOR WIND TURBINE DESIGN, ANALYSIS AND TESTS
This is a gudeline for Assoc.Prof.Dr. Sercan Acarer's group within ENG401 Family of Courses.
The syllabus is:
The purpose and scope of the wind turbine project is to:
• Design either a Horizontal-Axis or a Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT AND VAWT, resp.) (the basic design with the open-source QBlade Software)
• Perform computer simulations in ANSYS Fluent and Mechanical to assess aerodynamic and structural performances respectively
• Manufacture the turbine with a suitable method (composites, 3d printing, etc.)
• Choose a suitable electric generator/motor and design simple electronics to measure turbine power and control rotational speed (in collaboration with EEE)
• Run the turbine in the final competition at the end of the semester (in collaboration with EEE)
Numerical constraints are defined as the below:
• The height of the turbine tower must be 170cm; therefore, the center of the wind turbine rotor must also be 170cm from the ground
• The rotor swept area (projected frontal area) must fit within a square of 60cm*60cm (see the area formed by orange dashed lines), therefore only 0.6m*0.6m portion of the 1m*1m blowing area will be used. This corresponds to a turbine diameter (2*R) of 60cm both for horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines. In case for a vertical axis wind turbine (the one in the right in the above figure), turbine blade height (L) must also be maximum 60cm
• The turbine must be designed for a wind speed of 10m/s. The minimum wind speed the turbine starts electricity generation is 4m/s and the maximum wind speed the turbine structurally withstands is 12m/s. These must be demonstrated in the tests.
VAWTs are typically less efficient than HAWTs. However, HAWT has a circular swept (frontal) area and the corners of the 60cm*60cm area cannot be covered (orange dashed lines in the figure). On the other hand, VAWTs can cover the corners since their swept area can be a rectangle. Therefore VAWT and HAWT are expected to produce similar powers under these constraints. The choice of turbine type will depend on the feasibility considerations of each team. Therefore you will decide which turbine to be used. A justification is definitely needed.
Evaluation criteria:
• The engineering quality (use of state-of-the-art methods in a credible way, justification of design decisions and reporting quality) will have a weight of 40%
• The aggreement between the design intents (power generation at 4, 10 and 12m/s) and the actual test results will have a weight of 30%
• The maximum TESTED electricity generation at 10m/s wind speed will have a weight of 30%
Some guidelines:
In order to make the initial basic aerodynamic design, you may use QBlade software. It is a quick power estimation and parametric design algorithm based on actuator disc blade element momentum (BEM) method. It needs individual lift and drag characteristics of 2D airfoil cross sections as inputs (either experimental or with embedded simple potential flow solver of QBlade). Then, it predicts the performance of stacked 3D blades (from 2D cross-sections) and wind turbine as a whole. Together with its user's guide, it can be downloaded from:
https://qblade.org/
You may select suitable 2D airfoil profiles (like NACA profiles, a research topic for you) and import them and their a-CL and a-CD curves to QBlade (a: angle of attack). Once you make the basic design of the 3D blades and layout of the turbine, you can then proceed with mechanical (structural simulations, tower design, hub design, etc.) and electrical designs (power measurement and speed control, in collaboration with Asst.Prof.Dr.Hüseyin Yeşilyurt and the students of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department). Manufacturing and testing will conclude the project.
An initial source that may be considered is:
https://doi.org/doi:10.3390/en5093425
Reports from previous-year students, similar in content, may be viewed from below links:
REPORT1
REPORT2
REPORT3
REPORT4
These does not necessarily be perfect reports and they may contain many errors. They are shared for you just to improve and build upon them.
