Wind Turbine and Turbomachinery Computational Analysis with the ALE and Space-Time Variational Multiscale Methods and Isogeometric Discretization

Abstract

<jats:p>The challenges encountered in computational analysis of wind turbines and turbomachinery include turbulent rotational flows, complex geometries, moving boundaries and interfaces, such as the rotor motion, and the fluid-structure interaction (FSI), such as the FSI between the wind turbine blade and the air. The Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) and Space-Time (ST) Variational Multiscale (VMS) methods and isogeometric discretization have been effective in addressing these challenges. The ALE-VMS and ST-VMS serve as core computational methods. They are supplemented with special methods like the Slip Interface (SI) method and ST Isogeometric Analysis with NURBS basis functions in time. We describe the core and special methods and present, as examples of challenging computations performed, computational analysis of horizontal and vertical-axis wind turbines and flow-driven This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.</jats:p>

Gas turbine computational flow and structure analysis with isogeometric discretization and a complex-geometry mesh generation method

“…The ALE-SUPS, RBVMS and ALE-VMS have been applied to many classes of FSI, MBI and fluid mechanics problems. The classes of problems include ram-air parachute FSI [17], wind turbine aerodynamics and FSI [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], more specifically, vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) [33,34,37,38], floating wind turbines [39], wind turbines in atmospheric boundary layers [32][33][34][40][41][42], and fatigue damage in wind turbine blades [43], patient-specific cardiovascular fluid mechanics and FSI [44][45][46][47][48][49][50], biomedicaldevice FSI [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58], ship hydrodynamics with free-surface flow and fluid-object interaction [59,60], hydrodynamics and FSI of a hydraulic arresting gear [61,62], hydrodynamics of tidal-stream turbines with free-surface flow…”

“…The ST-SUPS and ST-VMS have also been applied to many classes of FSI, MBI and fluid mechanics problems (see [75] for a comprehensive summary of the work prior to July 2018). The classes of problems include spacecraft parachute analysis for the landing-stage parachutes [2,[76][77][78][79], coverseparation parachutes [80] and the drogue parachutes [81][82][83], wind turbine aerodynamics for horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) rotors [2,3,24,84], full HAWTs [30,[85][86][87] and VAWTs [33][34][35][36]88,89], flapping-wing aerodynamics for an actual locust [2,[90][91][92], bioinspired MAVs [86,87,93,94] and wing-clapping [95,96], blood flow analysis of cerebral aneurysms [86,97], stent-blocked aneurysms [97][98][99], aortas [57,58,[100][101][102][103]…”

“…The ST-SI introduced in [113] for the coupled incompressible-flow and thermal-transport equations retains the high-resolution representation of the thermo-fluid boundary layers near spinning solid surfaces. These ST-SI methods have been applied to aerodynamic analysis of VAWTs [33][34][35][36]88,89], thermo-fluid analysis of disk brakes [113], flow-driven string dynamics in turbomachinery [35,36,[114][115][116], flow analysis of turbocharger turbines [117][118][119][120][121], flow around tires with road contact and deformation [106,[122][123][124][125], fluid films [125,126], aerodynamic analysis of ram-air parachutes [41,42,127], and flow analysis of heart valves [57,58,102,[107][108][109] and ventricle-valve-aorta sequences [104]. In the ST-SI version presented in [88] the SI is between a thin porous structure and the fluid on its two sides.…”

“…The STNMUM and the ST-IGA with IGA basis functions in time have been used in many 3D computations. The classes of problems solved are flapping-wing aerodynamics for an actual locust [2,[90][91][92], bioinspired MAVs [86,87,93,94] and wing-clapping [95,96], separation aerodynamics of spacecraft [80], aerodynamics of horizontal-axis [30,[85][86][87] and vertical-axis [33][34][35][36]88,89] wind turbines, thermo-fluid analysis of ground vehicles and their tires [41,106,112], thermo-fluid analysis of disk brakes [113], flow-driven string dynamics in turbomachinery [35,36,[114][115][116], flow analysis of turbocharger turbines [117][118][119][120][121], and flow analysis of coronary arteries in motion [110].…”

“…The ST-IGA with IGA basis functions in space has been used in ST computational flow analysis of turbocharger turbines [117][118][119][120][121], flow-driven string dynamics in turbomachinery [35,36,115,116], ram-air parachutes [41,42,127], spacecraft parachutes [129], aortas [57,58,102,103], heart valves [57,58,102,[107][108][109], ventricle-valve-aorta sequences [104], coronary arteries in motion [110], tires with road contact and deformation [123][124][125], fluid films [125,126], and VAWTs [35,36,89]. The image-based arterial geometries used in patient-specific arterial FSI computations do not come from the zero-stress state (ZSS) of the artery.…”