0000000000176246
AUTHOR
Zied Driss
A NEW SOLVER FOR NON-ISOTHERMAL FLOWS IN NATURAL AND MIXED CONVECTION
Most thermal fluid flow of real-life practical problems fall in the category of low Mach-number or incompressible flow (e.g., industrial flows inside ducts, or around stationary/moving objects, flows in biological/biomedical problems, or atmospheric flows). Several numerical techniques have been proposed for simulation of thermal flows, Finite Difference (FDM), Finite Element (FEM), Finite Volume (FVM) and Lattice Boltzmann (LBM) methods. Unlike the FVMs and FEMs, the classical FDMs show some difficulties in handling irregular geometries. Conventional formulation of FEMs (e.g., Galerkin FEMs) suffers from the lack of local mass balance, recovered by modified formulations (Narasimhan & W…
Experimental and numerical investigation of the leading edge sweep angle effect on the performance of a delta blades hydrokinetic turbine
Abstract In the last decades, an increase of energy consumption has been noted around the world. Hence, the excessive use of fossil fuels can lead to serious environmental concerns. Indeed, the use of renewable energy sources is needed to reduce the greenhouse gas effects and the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. Small-scale hydropower could be an interesting and renewable alternative solution. The cross-flow turbines present several advantages compared to the axial-flow turbines. Therefore, increasing efforts are taken to enhance the efficiency and extend the applicability of the cross-flow turbines. In this paper, experimental investigation was carried out to evaluate the performance of a …
A new solver for incompressible non-isothermal flows in natural and mixed convection over unstructured grids
Abstract In the present paper we propose a new numerical methodology for the solution of 2D non-isothermal incompressible flows for natural and mixed convection in irregular geometries. The governing equations are the Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations and the Energy Conservation Equation. Fluid velocity and temperature are coupled in the buoyancy term of the momentum equations according to the Oberbeck–Boussinesq approximation. The governing equations are discretized over unstructured triangular meshes satisfying the Delaunay property. Thanks to the Oberbeck–Boussinesq hypothesis, the flow and energy problems are solved in an uncoupled way, and two fractional time step procedures are s…
Performance study of a Helical Savonius hydrokinetic turbine with a new deflector system design
Abstract The use of renewable energy sources has becoming a necessity to generate electricity. Helical Savonius rotors have been preferred for small-scale hydropower generation. Numerous studies were carried out to improve the performance of the Helical Savonius rotor which has not been fully explored. In this paper, an experimental study was carried out to evaluate the performance of a Helical Savonius water rotor in an irrigation channel. In order to enhance the performance of the studied water rotor, a new deflector system design was proposed. Different configurations of the proposed deflector system were tested numerically using the commercial software ANSYS FLUENT 17.0. Without a defle…
Impeller optimization in crossflow hydraulic turbines
Crossflow turbines represent a valuable choice for energy recovery in aqueducts, due to their constructive simplicity and good efficiency under variable head jump conditions. Several experimental and numerical studies concerning the optimal design of crossflow hydraulic turbines have already been proposed, but all of them assume that structural safety is fully compatible with the sought after geometry. We show first, with reference to a specific study case, that the geometry of the most efficient impeller would lead shortly, using blades with a traditional circular profile made with standard material, to their mechanical failure. A methodology for fully coupled fluid dynamic and mechanical …
Performance Improvement of a Drag Hydrokinetic Turbine
Hydropower is at present in many locations, among all the other possible renewable energy sources, the best one for net cost per unit power. In contrast to traditional installation, based on water storage in artificial basins, free flow river turbines also provide a very low environmental impact due to their negligible effect on solid transport. Among them, kinetic turbines with vertical axis are very inexpensive and have almost zero impact on fish and local fauna. In application to tidal waves and sea waves, where vertically averaged velocities have alternate direction, a Savonius rotor also has the advantage of being productive during the whole time cycle. In this work, the effect of an u…
Performance improvement of a Savonius water rotor with novel blade shapes
Abstract Savonius water rotor is a prominent drag based turbine able to extract energy available in flowing water with low velocity like river streams, tidal currents or other man made water canals. However, in view of its low performance, an enhanced design of the rotor blades is necessary to better its efficiency. Therefore, the present study aims to improve the efficiency of Savonius rotor by changing the blade design. Different blade shapes were investigated numerically using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Using conventional design, the peak power coefficient was found to be 0.166 at tip-speed ratio of 0.78. However, the peak power coefficient reaches 0.184 using the optimal blade …
Performance improvement of a novel combined water turbine
Abstract Nowadays, industrials and researchers are looking for renewable energy resources due to the increase of energy demand. Recently, the ability of combined turbines in harnessing energy from water current has increased their renewed interest. However, there still exist a big knowledge gap to select the optimal design of these turbines. In this paper, systematic studies of stand-alone helical Savonius and delta bladed Darrieus turbines were carried out using experimental methods as a precursor to analyze their roles in hybrid configuration. By varying the attachment angle, two hybrid configurations were tested experimentally. Using the optimal attachment angle, six hybrid configuration…
Performance Study of Twisted Darrieus Hydrokinetic Turbine With Novel Blade Design
Abstract Twisted Darrieus water turbine is receiving growing attention for small-scale hydropower generation. Accordingly, the need for raised water energy conversion incentivizes researchers to focus on the blade shape optimization of twisted Darrieus turbine. In view of this, experimental analysis has been performed to appraise the efficiency of a spiral Darrieus water rotor in the present work. To better the performance parameters of the studied water rotor with twisted blades, three novel blade shapes, namely U-shaped blade, V-shaped blade, and W-shaped blade, have been numerically tested using a computational fluid dynamics three-dimensional numerical model. The maximum power coefficie…
A novel pressure regulation system based on Banki hydro turbine for energy recovery under in-range and out-range discharge conditions
Abstract Efficiency improvement of water distribution networks needs to be in place to guarantee a long life period under suitable operating conditions. Excessive pressure is among the well-known issues encountered in water distribution networks which can cause strength damages to the piping system. In order to overcome this drawback and to reach a suitable water pressure delivery, the present work suggests a novel pressure regulation system. This regulation system is consisting of a Banki turbine equipped with a mobile flap as a control device. The suggested pressure regulation system was experimentally and numerically investigated under in-range i.e. like actual water distribution network…
Effect of the Converging Pipe on the Performance of a Lucid Spherical Rotor
Lucid spherical rotor is a cross-flow rotor developed to be installed within a pipeline. The purpose of installing this type of rotor is to collect excess energy available in gravity-fed water pipelines. In order to enhance the efficiency of the rotor which is installed in a channel, this paper aims to study the performance of Lucid spherical rotor with converging pipe. Numerical investigations were carried out to analyze the effect of the converging pipe on the performance of the rotor. Numerical simulations have been carried out using the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations in conjunction with the realizable $$k-{\varepsilon }$$ turbulence model. The validation of the numer…