Numerical Simulation and Virtual Reality Visualization of Horizontal and Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) is a rising technology that creates a computer-generated immersive environment to provide users a realistic experience, through which people who are not analysis experts become able to see numerical simulation results in a context that they can easily understand. VR supports a safe and productive working environment in which users can perceive worlds, which otherwise could be too complex, too dangerous, or impossible or impractical to explore directly, or even not yet in existence. In recent years, VR has been employed to an increasing number of scientific research areas across different disciplines, such as numerical simulation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) discussed in present study. Wind flow around wind turbines is a complex problem to simulate and understand. Predicting the interaction between wind and turbine blades is complicated by issues such as rotating motion, mechanical resistance from the breaking system, as well as inter-blade and inter-turbine wake effects. The present research uses CFD numerical simulation to predict the motion and wind flow around two types of turbines: 1) a small scale Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) and 2) a small scale Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT). Results from these simulations have been used to generate virtual reality (VR) visualizations and brought into an immersive environment to attempt to better understand the phenomena involved.

Visualization framework for CAVE virtual reality systems

“…One of the earliest CAVE programs was a visualization tool for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) [13]. The visualization of CFD data continues to be an important application of CAVEs [14,15,16,17,18]. For instance, a new structure in electric current was recently discovered in a magnetohydrodynamics simulation using a CAVE VR visualization [19].…”

Immersive Vr Visualizations by Vfive Part 1: Development

“…One of the early visualization tools for CAVE systems was CAVEvis [3] developed in 1990s, which was to analyze time varying fluid data. Since then, CAVE systems have been used in broad spectrum of visualizations, including seismic simulation [4], meteorological simulation [5], biomedical fluid simulation [6], magnetic resonance imaging [7], turbulence simulation [8], CFD of molten iron [9], CFD of wind turbines [10], geomagnetic field [11], and archaeological [12]. Various applications in scientific visualization and related user-interface study at Brown University are summarized in [13].…”

Applications and a three-dimensional desktop environment for an immersive virtual reality system

“…CAVE systems have been used for scientific visualizations from the first system [1] until the latest generation (StarCAVE) [2]. For example, visualization applications in CAVE systems have been developed to analyze general computational fluid dynamics (CFD) [3], turbulence simulations [4], CFD of molten iron [5], CFD of wind turbines [6], seismic simulation [7], meteorological simulation [8], biomedical fluid simulation [9], magnetic resonance imaging [10], geomagnetic fields [11], archaeological studies [12], and geophysical surveys [13].…”