Wind Turbine Aerodynamics
We are working on wind turbine modeling for computational fluid dynamics in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We are studying the projection of turbine body forces onto the flow field using large-eddy simulations. We are comparing the performance of actuator line and actuator disk models in uniform inflow and in wind farm arrays. We have found that both models are a viable representation of wind turbines in wind energy fluid flow simulations.
Roughness Effect of Pinfins
The effect of pin fin arrays in the augmentation of heat transfer is absolutely necessary on aerospace application such as turbine airfoil cooling. Along with Pratt and Whitney and Pennsylvania State University we are studying the effect of the pin spacing on the near wake which in turn affect the heat transfer. It is more convenient to model the flow inside an airfoil by numerical means, therefore numerical experiments consisting of RANS, RSM, LES and DNS models are being performed in order to compare with experimental results. So far it has been found that the numerical results are in accordance to the experimental results predicting the flow dynamics of the pin fin arrays.
Oceanography
The regional oceanic modeling system (ROMS) has been implemented in San Juan Bay Puerto Rico and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. For the San Juan Bay, an off-line nesting approach using an operational ocean model of the navy ocean prediction system (AmSeas NCOM) has been used. The resolution ranged from a regional scale of 3 km to a 90m harbor scale. For the US Virgin Islands, the resolution ranged from 3km to 80m and both on-line and offline nesting (for generation of initial and boundary conditions) were used. Good agreement has been found with coastal observations with sea surface height gauges and ADCP measurements.