Computational fluid dynamics windfarm design

Abstract

The motivation behind this project is to promote rural development in New Brunswick, in particular the Mount Carleton Provincial Park. The aim is to use the construction and power output of the proposed wind farm design to invigorate the local economy, with the long term goal of establishing the region with the potential for further growth as a possible tourist destination. The University of New Brunswick’s Mechanical Engineering Department has tasked this group with the design of a wind turbine farm, using computational fluid dynamics methods, to be located in the Mount Carleton region. As requested, this report fully details the design process, model development and final design. Four locations in the region were selected and analyzed by extracting 3-dimensional topographical models from Google Earth using Google SketchUp. The models were then exported into Pointwise, which was used to create a mesh enclosing the control volume of interest. The CFD simulations have been generated using EXN/Aero, a program created by Envenio Inc., at the University of New Brunswick. Wind data, provided by the Department of Environment Canada, was extracted and used as an input condition in the CFD solver to determine the local wind effects in the region. Upon selection of the optimal location, the 6 Vestas V100 – 1.8 MW wind turbine models have been added to the final mesh. The mesh was then reanalyzed to determine the optimal placement of the turbines within the region, such that the efficiency of the turbines was maximized. A final simulation (with turbines present) was implemented to estimate the true power output of each turbine due to the land topography.