Wind Turbine and Turbomachinery Computational Analysis with the ALE and Space-Time Variational Multiscale Methods and Isogeometric Discretization

Abstract

The challenges encountered in computational analysis of wind turbines and turbomachinery include turbulent rotational flows, complex geometries, moving boundaries and interfaces, such as the rotor motion, and the fluid-structure interaction (FSI), such as the FSI between the wind turbine blade and the air. The Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) and Space-Time (ST) Variational Multiscale (VMS) methods and isogeometric discretization have been effective in addressing these challenges. The ALE-VMS and ST-VMS serve as core computational methods. They are supplemented with special methods like the Slip Interface (SI) method and ST Isogeometric Analysis with NURBS basis functions in time. We describe the core and special methods and present, as examples of challenging computations performed, computational analysis of horizontal and vertical-axis wind turbines and flow-driven This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.