A Novel Method of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Noise Prediction
Regular paper
Trinity College Dublin
Monday 1 june, 2015, 12:20 - 12:40
0.7 Lisbon (47)
Abstract:
Vertical Axis Wind Turbines are becoming more commonplace in urban environments but
to date there has not been much computational work done to quantify their noise
outputs.
The EU FP7 SWIP project aims to deal with and overcome the main barriers
that slow down the massive deployment of small and medium size wind turbines. One
of the outputs of the project is a novel, six bladed, vertical axis wind turbine
rated at 2kW.
This work aims to predict aeroacoustic noise generated by the SWIP vertical axis
wind turbine by means of a novel noise prediction method. Due to the high
computational cost of LES an approach is proposed in which ANSYS Fluent is used to
determine the transient flow solution, using LES, on a 2.5D airfoil section
undergoing rotation. Acoustic signals are determined by employing the FW-H analogy
over an integration region around the turbine. Contribution of sources along the
span are then summed up and propagated to a farfield receiver as the overall noise
produced by the turbine. An estimate of the SPL and directivity of aeroacoustic
noise sources of the turbine is determined and the computational results will be
verified once the wind turbine is manufactured and installed.