[VAWT]

Dear Foamers

We are trying to model a three-bladed vertical-axis wind turbine with OpenFOAM, using the pimpleDymFoam solver. We have observed some strange flow behavior (very high speeds near the leading edge) at one of the blades. Initially the problem appeared running a simulation at 300rpm so we decided to run a trial with a very small rotation movement (around 0.01º per second). We also ran a reference case with a rotation speed of 0º/second. Free-stream velocity is 60m/s.

Much to our surprise, the result is quite different for blade number 3 in the 0.01º/s and 0º/s case. All the numerical settings and simulation conditions are identical for both simulations. The attached figure shows the flow speed around the three blades (maximum velocity on the right column has been rescaled for easier comparison but the real maximum speed is about 150m/s). For the first two blades the difference between the non-rotating and slowly rotating models is small. For the third blade there is an unreasonably large difference. Note that the colour scale for the rotating case has been truncated.

Does someone have any idea about the origin of this problem? Could this be a bug in the pimpleDyMFoam solver or in the AMI? Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

[carstenf]

Hi,
did you solved the problem? I have the same issue

best regards

[Aerospace]

It was a stupid error, I used fixedValue for the velocity at blade wall instead of movingWall.

Regards

[carstenf]

ahh, thank you very much for that quick reply, that solved my problem too.

best regards