• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.98-106
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• 2014

The effect of blockage ratio on wind tunnel testing of small vertical-axis wind turbine has been investigated in this study. Height and rotor diameter of the three blades Darrieus vertical axis wind turbine used in present test were 0.4m and 0.35m respectively. We measured the wind speeds and power coefficient at three different wind tunnels where blockage ratio were 3.5%, 13.4% and 24.7% respectively. The test results show that the measured powers have been strongly influenced by blockage ratio, generally increased as the blockage ratio increases. The maximum power at higher blockage ratio has been obtained at relatively high tip speed ratio compared with that at low blockage ratio. The measured power coefficients under high blockage ratio can be improved from proper correction using the simple correction equation based on blockage factor. In present study, the correction error for power coefficient can be less than 5%, however correction effectiveness reveals relatively poor at high blockage ratio and low wind speed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.34 no.12
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• pp.67-74
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• 2006

An unsteady blockage-correction method utilizing wall pressure distribution on the test section has been developed for the wall interference correction of a closed test-section subsonic wind tunnel. The pressure distribution along the test section wall was decomposed into Fourier series and a quasi-steady method based on a measured-boundary-condition method was applied to each Fourier coefficient. The unsteady correction for a complete test period was accomplished by recombining each corrected terms. The present method was validated by appling computed unsteady flows over a cylinder and an oscillating airfoil in the test sections. The corrected results by the present method agreed well with free-air condition.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.8
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• pp.42-49
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• 2005

A new blockage correction method has been developed for the wall interference correction of closed test-section subsonic wind tunnels based on the nonlinear relationship between separation blockage and separation drag. This method can be applied continuously from the linear lift-slope region to the highly nonlinear post-stall region by on-line processing. The present method was validated by comparing the results with a classical method based on the test results of a bluff body and a measured-boundary-condition method. It was shown that the present method is in good agreement with the measured-boundary-condition method, enabling better wall corrections than the bluff body method in both near-stall and post-stall regions.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.541-551
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• 2009

This paper explains how to correctly measure the drag coefficient of a circular cylinder in wind tunnels with large blockage ratios and for the sub-critical to the super-critical flow regimes. When dealing with large blockage ratios, the drag has to be corrected for wall constraints. Different formulations for correcting blockage effect are compared for each flow regime based on drag measurements of smooth circular cylinders performed in a wind tunnel for three different blockage ratios. None of the correction model known in the literature is valid for all the flow regimes. To optimize the correction and reduce the scatter of the results, different correction models should be combined depending on the flow regime. In the sub-critical regime, the best results are obtained using Allen and Vincenti's formula or Maskell's theory with ${\varepsilon}$=0.96. In the super-critical regime, one should prefer using Glauert's formula with G=0.6 or the model of Modi and El-Sherbiny. The change in the formulations appears at the flow transition with a variation of the wake pattern when passing from sub-critical to super-critical flow regimes. This parameter being not considered in the known blockage corrections, these theories are not valid for all the flow regimes.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.55-67
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• 2020

Wind tunnel test is one of the most important means to study the flutter performance of bridges, but there are blockage effects in flutter test due to the size limitation of the wind tunnel. On the other hand, the size of computational domain can be defined by users in the numerical simulation. This paper presents a study on blockage effects of a simplified box girder by computation fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, the blockage effects on the aerodynamic characteristics and flutter performance of a long-span suspension bridge are studied. The results show that the aerodynamic coefficients and the absolute value of mean pressure coefficient increase with the increase of the blockage ratio. And the aerodynamic coefficients can be corrected by the mean wind speed in the plane of leading edge of model. At each angle of attack, the critical flutter wind speed decreases as the blockage ratio increases, but the difference is that bending-torsion coupled flutter and torsional flutter occur at lower and larger angles of attack respectively. Finally, the correction formula of critical wind speed at 0° angle of attack is given, which can provide reference for wind resistance design of streamlined box girders in practical engineering.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.133-139
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• 2020

In order to study the resistance test technique for the submerged body in Large Cavitation Tunnel (LCT), DARPA Suboff, submarine model publicly available was manufactured. DTRC released the resistance test data of DARPA Suboff conducted at ship speeds up to 18.0 knots in high-speed towing tank in 1990. As LCT is considered restricted waterways with walls, the resistance test results must be corrected with three wall blockage effects called buoyancy effect, solid blockage effect and wake blockage effect. Before correction, the resistance of LCT was 16~20 % higher than that of DTRC. After correction, the resistance and the resistance coefficients were compared with those of DTRC. The corrected resistance of LCT shows good agreement with that of DTRC. The residual resistance coefficient shows the difference according to the calculation method of buoyancy and frictional resistance coefficient. This paper suggests the best way for the calculation of residual resistance coefficient, On the basis of the present study, it is thought that the operating conditions for the propeller cavitation and noise tests can be drawn through LCT tests.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.351-364
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• 1998

In wind tunnel experiments, the blockage effect is a very important factor which affects the test results significantly. A number of investigations into this problem, especially on the blockage correction of drag coefficient, have been carried out in the past. However, only a limited number of works have been reported on the wind tunnel blockage effect on wind-induced vibration although it is considered to be fairly important. This paper discusses the aerodynamic characteristics of the square model and square model with corner cut based on a series of the wind tunnel tests with various blockage ratios and angles of attack. From the test results, the aerodynamic behavior of square models with up to 10% blockage ratio are almost the same and square models with up to 10% blockage ratio can be tested as a group which behaves similarly.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.302-312
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• 2004

This work developed improved slip factor model and correction method to predict flow through impeller in forward-curved centrifugal fan. Both steady and unsteady three-dimensional CFD analyses were performed to validate the slip factor model and the correction method. The results show that the improved slip factor model presented in this paper could provide more accurate predictions for forward-curved centrifugal impeller than the other slip factor models since the present model takes into account the effect of blade curvature. The correction method is provided to predict mass-averaged absolute circumferential velocity at the exit of impeller by taking account of blockage effects induced by the large-scale backflow near the front plate and flow separation within blade passage. The comparison with CFD results also shows that the improved slip factor model coupled with the present correction method provides accurate predictions for mass-averaged absolute circumferential velocity at the exit of impeller near and above the flow rate of peak total pressure coefficient.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.42 no.8
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• pp.607-617
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• 2009

Radar beam blocking which is partially or entirely interrupted by obstacles like a mountain causes underestimation of the rainfall. In this paper, partially blocked radar reflectivity is retrieved using the ARM(Accumulated Reflectivity Map). ARM is made by accumulation of the radar reflectivity and very useful product to analyze the beam blockage. The blockage correcting map could be obtained by assuming the spatially uniform reflectivity field in the ARM. This method is applied to the cases of typhoon and Changma, and we obtain the MFE(Mean Fractional Error) from two radar data, the one is objective radar data which is affected by blockage and the other is comparative radar data which is not affected by blockage. Before blocking correction, MFE is 20-35%. However, after correction, MFE decreases to 7-10%.

• Atmosphere
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.467-481
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• 2017

A correction method of reflectivity in partial beam blockage (PBB) area is suggested, which is based on the combination of digital terrain information and self-consistency principle between polarimetric observation. First, the reflectivity was corrected by adding the radar energy loss estimated from beam blockage simulation using digital elevation model (DEM) and beam propagation geometry in standard atmosphere. The additional energy loss by unexpected obstacles and non-standard beam propagation was estimated by using the coefficient between accumulated reflectivity ($Z_H$) and differences of differential phase shift (${\Phi}_{DP}$) along radial direction. The proposed method was applied to operational S-band dual-polarization radar at Jindo and its performance was compared with those of simulation method and self-consistency method for six rainfall cases. When the accumulated reflectivity and increment of ${\Phi}_{DP}$ along radial direction are too small, the self-consistency method has failed to correct the reflectivity while the combined method has corrected the reflectivity bias reasonably. The correction based on beam simulation showed the underestimation. For evaluation of rainfall estimation, the FBs (FRMSEs) of simulation method and self-consistency principle were -0.32 (0.59) and -0.30 (0.57), respectively. The proposed method showed the lowest FB (-0.24) and FRMSE (0.50). The FB and FMSE were improved by about 18% and by 19% in comparison to those before correction (-0.42 and 0.70). We can conclude that the proposed method can improve the accuracy of rainfall estimation in PBB area.