• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.64-71
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• 2010

The flow and noise characteristics of wake behind wind-turbine blades have been investigated experimentally using a two-frame particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. Experiments were carried out in a POSTECH subsonic large wind-tunnel ($1.8^W{\times}1.5^H{\times}4.3^L\;m^3$) with KBP-750D (3-blade type) wind-turbine model at a freestream velocity of $U_o\;=\;15\;m/s$ and a tip speed ratio $\lambda\;=\;6.14$ (2933 rpm). The wind-turbine blades are connected to an AC servo motor, brake, encoder and torque meter to control the rotational speed and to extract a synchronization signal for PIV measurements. The wake flow was measured at four azimuth angles ($\phi\;=\;0^{\circ}$, $30^{\circ}$, $60^{\circ}$ and $90^{\circ}$) of the wind-turbine blade. The dominant flow structure of the wake is large-scale tip vortices. The turbulent statistics such as turbulent intensity are weakened as the flow goes downstream due to turbulent dissipation. The dominant peak frequency of the noise signal is identical to the rotation frequency of blades. The noise seems to be mainly induced by the tip vortices.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.9
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• pp.929-936
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• 2015

Nacelle anemometers are mounted on wind-turbine nacelles behind blade roots to measure the free-stream wind speed projected onto the wind turbine for control purposes. However, nacelle anemometers measure the transformed wind speed that is due to the wake effect caused by the blades' rotation and the nacelle geometry, etc. In this paper, we derive the Nacelle Transfer Function (NTF) to calibrate the nacelle wind speed to the free-stream wind speed, as required to carry out the performance test of wind turbines according to the IEC 61400-12-2 Wind-Turbine Standard. For the reference free-stream wind data, we use the Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) measurement at the Shinan wind power plant located on the Bigeumdo Island shoreline. To improve the simple linear regression NTF, we derive the multiple nonlinear regression NTF. The standard error of the wind speed was found to have decreased by a factor of 9.4, whereas the mean of the power-output residual distribution decreased by 6.5 when the 2-parameter NTF was used instead of the 1-parameter NTF.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.59-65
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• 2020

Vertical axis wind energy systems including 3 and 4 blades are numerically investigated in a two-dimensional (2D) computational domain. The power coefficient (C_p) is adopted to measure the efficiency of the system and the effect of the rotating velocity on the power coefficient is analyzed for the two different systems. The rotating velocity varies from 30 rad/s to 90 rad/s, which corresponds to the tip speed ratio (T.S.R) of 0.5 to 1.5. The torque exerted on the blades is mainly determined by the aerodynamic force in the x-direction and maximized when the blade is positioned at around θ = 186°. The efficiency of the 4-blade system is higher than that of the 3-blade system within the tip speed ratio range between 0.5 and 0.67, besides where the 3-blade system shows a better performance. For the 3-blade system, the maximum efficiency is reached to 0.082 at the tip speed ratio of 1.083. The maximum efficiency of the 4-blade system is 0.071 at T.S.R. = 0.92. The velocity fields in the x-direction, pressure fields, and the vorticity magnitude are analyzed in detail for the optimal cases of the 3- and 4-blades systems, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.10
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• pp.891-898
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• 2007

Optimal aerodynamic design for the pitch-controlled horizontal axis wind turbine and its aerodynamic performance for various pitch angles are performed numerically by using the blade element momentum theory. The numerical calculation includes effects such as Prandtl‘s tip loss, airfoil distribution, and wake rotation. Six different airfoils are distributed along the blade span, and the special airfoil i.e. airfoil of 40% thickness ratio is adopted at the hub side to have structural integrity. The nonlinear chord obtained from the optimal design procedure is linearized to decrease the weight and to increase the productivity with very little change of the aerodynamic performance. From the comparisons of the power, thrust, and torque coefficients with corresponding values of different pitch angles, the aerodynamic performance shows delicate changes for just $3^{\circ}$ increase or decrease of the pitch angle. For precisive pitch control, it requires the pitch control algorithm and its drive mechanism below $3^{\circ}$ increment of pitch angle. The maximum torque is generated when the speed ratio is smaller than the designed one.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.28-31
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• 2016

In this study, we investigate the wake characteristics in two cases which are laminar inflow and turbulent inflow. To solve the flow with wind turbines and its wake, we use large eddy simulation (LES) technique with actuator line method (ALM) and turbulent inflow of Turbsim. Turbulent inflow which contains the characteristic of the stable atmospheric boundary layer is used. We perform the quantitative analysis of velocity deficit and turbulence intensity in two cases. Time series of velocity deficit at the first, the second column in two cases are compared to observe the performance of wind turbine. The performance in the first column in laminar inflow is overestimated compared to that in turbulent inflow. And we observe that wake in the case with turbulent inflow drive to the span-wise direction and wake recovery in turbulent inflow is more effective. In quadrant analysis of Reynolds stress, the ejection and the sweep motion in turbulent inflow case are bigger than those in laminar inflow case.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.17-25
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• 2015

The main objective of this study is to predict the wind power generation at the wind farm using various wake models. Modeling of wind farm is a prerequisite for prediction of annual energy production at the wind farm. In this study, we modeled 20 MW class Seongsan wind farm which has 10 wind turbines located at the eastern part of Jeju Island. WindSim based on the computational fluid dynamics was adopted for the estimation of power generation. The power curve and thrust coefficient with meteorology file were prepared for wind farm modelling. The meteorology file was produced based on the measured data of the Korea Wind Atlas provided by Korea Institute of Energy Research. Three types of wake models such as Jensen, Larsen, and Ishihara et al. wake models were applied to investigate the wake effects. From the result, Jensen and Ishihara wake models show nearly the same value of power generation whereas the Larsen wake model shows the largest value. New positions of wind turbines are proposed to reduce the wake loss, and to increase the annual energy production of the wind farm.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.2192-2197
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• 2003

The purpose of this 3-D numerical simulation is evaluate the application of a commercial CFD code to predict 3-D flow and power characteristics of wind turbines. The experimental approach, which has been main method of investigation, appears to be its limits, the cost increasing with the size of the wind turbines, hence mostly limited to observing the phenomena on rotor blades. Therefore, the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques and Navier-Stokes solvers are considered a very serious contender. The flow solver CFX-TASCflow is employed in all computations in this paper. The 3-D flow separation and the wake distribution of 2 and 3 bladed Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) are compared to Heuristic model and smoke-visualized experimental result by NREL(National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Simulated 3-D flow separation structure on the rotor blade is very similar to Heuristic model and the wake structure of the wind turbine is good consistent with smoke-visualized result. The calculated power of the 3 bladed rotor by CFD is compared with BEM results by TV-Delft. The CFD results of which is somewhat consist with BEM results, under an error less than 10%.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.906-913
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• 2003

The purpose of this 3-D numerical simulation is to evaluate the application of a commercial CFD code to predict 3-D flow and power characteristics of wind turbines. The experimental approach, which has been main method of investigation, appears to be its limits, the cost increasing with the size of the wind turbines, hence mostly limited to observing the phenomena on rotor blades. Therefore. the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques and Navier-Stokes solvers are considered a very serious contender. The flow solver CFX-TASCflow is employed in all computations in this paper. The 3-D flow separation and the wake distribution of 2 and 3 bladed Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) are compared to Heuristic model and smoke-visualized experimental result by NREL(National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Simulated 3-D flow separation structure on the rotor blade is very similar to Heuristic model and the wake structure of the wind turbine is good consistent with smoke-visualized result. The calculated power of the 3 bladed rotor by CFD is compared with BEM results by TU-Delft. The CFD results of which is somewhat consist with BEM results. under an error less than 10%.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2017

In this study, we conduct a numerical experiment of the single 5MW NREL wind turbine and compare the performance of various vortex core identification for the wake behind the wind turbine. In the kinetic analysis of wind turbine, 20% velocity deficit at 200 s is observed, showing wake which contains tip vortex near blade tip and rotor vortex at the center of the wind turbine. Time series of velocity and turbulent intensity show numerical simulation converge to a quasi-steady state near 200 s. In the comparison between methods for vortex identification, ${\lambda}_2$-method has good performance in terms of tip vortex, rotor vortex, vortex during its cascade process compared to vorticity magnitude criteria, ${\Delta}$-method. We conclude that ${\lambda}_2$-method is suitable for vortex identification method for wake visualization.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.52-56
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• 2017

In this study, we investigate the flow characteristics of lift-type disk which behaves the up-down motion using the large eddy simulation (LES) and immersed boundary method (IBM). Also, we perform the noise analysis using pressure field at 1.35 m distance and reveal the cause of noise to observe the vortical structure analysis of flow result. It is observed that vortical structure and wind shear were generated at leading edge and tower with high velocity deficit and flow separation. High magnitude of flow noise was observed in low frequency range which is from 30 Hz to 60 Hz. It was observed that vortical structure at leading edge was generated in frequency range from 33.3 Hz to 41.6 Hz. Temporal characteristic in vortical structure at leading edge was similar to noise characteristics, having the similar frequency ranges.