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Experimental and numerical study of the wind tunnel blockage effects on the behaviour of a horizontal axis wind turbine
Proceedings of the XV Conference of the Italian Association for Wind Engineering, pp.272-285 • 2018
Publication Information
Authors
Abdelgalil Eltayesh, Massimiliano Burlanod, Francesco Castellani and Matteo Becchetti
Keywords
small-size wind turbines; wind tunnel tests; CFD simulations; wind tunnel blockage
Journal
Proceedings of the XV Conference of the Italian Association for Wind Engineering, pp.272-285
Publisher
Not Available
Volume
Not Available
Issue
Not Available
Pages
272-285
publication.type
International
Paper Link
Not Available
Supplementary Materials
Not Available
Abstract
This study presents an experimental and numerical investigation of the effects of tunnel blockage, defined as the ratio of the free portion of a wind tunnel cross-section with and without the rotor of a small-size (diameter 2 m) horizontal-axis turbine (HAWT). Experimental measurements were performed on three rotors with different number of blades, namely three, five and six, and different tip speed ratios, in the closed-loop open-test section wind tunnel of the University of Perugia. Numerical wind tunnel simulations were performed at the University of Genoa through a steady-RANS method with SST k-w turbulence model by means of the CFD solver OpenFOAM. The wind turbine was represented numerically by the actuator disc method. Simulations have been compared to experimental results for validation.