Skip to main content
Thesis defences

PhD Oral Exam - Matin Komeili, Mechanical Engineering

Thesis Title: Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-Viscosity Simulation of Morphing Blade Vertical Axis Wind Turbine on Mars


Date & time
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Cost

This event is free

Organization

School of Graduate Studies

Contact

Sharon Carey
514-848-2424, ext. 3802

Where

Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex
1515 St. Catherine W.
Room EV 1.162

Wheel chair accessible

Yes

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

After an aerospace engineer, Neil Alden Armstrong, step on Moon in July 1969 as the first mankind, it took more than three decades for NASA to successfully land a robot with a rover on Mars's surface in July 1997. Now they are planning on a new mission to send humans to the Mars in the next decade. Unquestionably, electricity is considered as a vital need for Mars' residents. Wind is a sustainable source of energy that blows on Mars regularly. Then generating power with wind turbines is considered as a promising and suitable choice.

Simplicity of installation and high efficiency are considered as two significant factors for wind turbines that operate on Mars surface. Therefore, in the current research we focus on a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) with morphing blades to increase its efficiency.

VAWT have a simple geometry but the flow structure around the blade is known to be one of the most complex flow in the Aerodynamics. Separation, vortex shedding and dynamic stall frequently occurs on the turbines' blade. Therefore a tool that predicts and simulates the flow around wind turbines' accurately is needed. Fortunately, growth of the computational capability along with development of more accurate numerical methods and new advanced turbulent models are technological advances used to develop an accurate simulation tool.

In the current dissertation, Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-Viscosity (WALE) simulation is used to simulate flow around a vertical axis wind turbine. Using a second-order accurate discretization technique both in space and time with a low-dissipative method, enforcing by an adjustable upwinding factor, achieves the required accuracy in Large Eddy Simulation. The entire cylindrical domain rotates in order to mimic wind turbine simulations. Moreover, Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) preserves the second order accuracy of numerical scheme under a dynamic mesh. A combination of spring and diffusion method is used to adjust the mesh dynamically whereas blade goes under deformation.

A Fortran Parallel code with an accurate numerical method along with WALE as turbulence model enables us to accurately predict the shear stress and pressure distribution on the blade. Therefore, dynamic stall location is spotted precisely. A morphing blade is used to adjust the blade profile as to harvest the maximum power out of available wind energy.


Back to top

© Concordia University