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This paper presents the influence of the strut and the tower on the aerodynamic force of the blade for the vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). It has been known that struts degrade the performance of VAWTs due to the inherent drag losses. In this study, three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations have been conducted to investigate the effect of the strut and the tower on the flow pattern around the rotor region, the blade force distribution, and the rotor performance.A comparison has been made for three different cases where only the blade; both the blade and the strut; and all of the blade, the strut, and the tower are considered.A 12-kW three-bladed H-rotor VAWT has been studied for tip speed ratio of 4.16. This ratio is relatively high for this turbine, so the influence of the strut is expected to be crucial. The numerical model has been validated first for a single pitching blade and full VAWTs. The simulations show distinguished differences in the force distribution along the blade between two cases with and without struts. Since the wake from the struts interacts with the blades, the tangential force is reduced especially in the downwind side when the struts are considered. The calculated power coefficient is decreased by 43 %, which shows the importance of modeling the strut effect properly for accurate prediction of the turbine performance. The simulations also indicate that including the tower does not yield significant difference in the force distribution and the rotor power.

This paper compares three different numerical models to evaluate their accuracy for predicting the performance of an H-rotor vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) considering the influence of struts. The strut of VAWTs is one factor that makes the flow feature around the turbine more complex and thus influences the rotor performance. The focus of this study is placed on analyzing how accurately three different numerical approaches are able to reproduce the force distribution and the resulting power, taking the strut effect into account. For the 12 kW straight-bladed VAWT, the blade force is simulated at three tip speed ratios by the full computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations, the actuator line model (ALM), and the vortex model. The results show that all the models do not indicate a significant influence of the struts in the total force over one revolution at low tip speed ratio. However, at middle and high tip speed ratio, the RANS model reproduces the significant decrease of the total tangential force that is caused due to the strut. Additionally, the RANS and vortex models present a clear influence of the struts in the force distribution along the blade at all three tip speed ratios investigated. The prediction by the ALM does not show such distinctive features of the strut impact. The RANS model is superior to the other two models for predicting the power coefficient considering the strut effect, especially at high tip speed ratio.

Authors have continued clinical research on type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). The trigger of this research was to make notice of elevated HbA1c of younger male diabetics for hot climate in the summer 2018. Enrolled subjects were 89 male patients with T2DM. Methods include the classification of 6 groups by the age, which are 21-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80 and 81-90. HbA1c values in median were calculated for five seasons of 15 months. Basal HbA1c in 6 groups was 7.0%, 7.1%, 7.2%, 7.2%, 6.9% and 7.0%, respectively. Seasonal changes in HbA1c values are as follows: i) groups 21-50 showed highest in the summer, ii) groups 51-70 showed gradually decrease from winter to summer, iii) groups 71-90 showed gradually decrease from winter to autumn, and increase for winter. For seasonal HbA1c changes, influence of hot climate during from spring to summer may be involved for 21-50 years. More activity in spring to summer may be related for 51-70 years. Less exercise and more eating may be observed for 71-90 years. There are not enough analyze for related factors, then further study concerning various biomarkers would be expected.

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This study investigates the numerical prediction for the aerodynamic noise of the vertical axis wind turbine using large eddy simulation and the acoustic analogy. Low noise designs are required especially in residential areas, and sound level generated by the wind turbine is therefore important to estimate. In this paper, the incompressible flow field around the 12 kW straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine with the rotor diameter of 6.5 m is solved, and the sound propagation is calculated based on the Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings acoustic analogy. The sound pressure for the turbine operating at high tip speed ratio is predicted, and it is validated by comparing with measurement. The measured spectra of the sound pressure observed at several azimuth angles show the broadband characteristics, and the prediction is able to reproduce the shape of these spectra. While previous works studying small-scaled vertical axis wind turbines found that the thickness noise is the dominant sound source, the loading noise can be considered to be a main contribution to the total sound for this turbine. The simulation also indicates that the received noise level is higher when the blade moves in the downwind than in the upwind side.