Computational fluid dynamics windfarm design
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Date
2016
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of New Brunswick
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.