PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SMALL WIND TURBINE

INSTALLED ON THE TOP OF A BUILDING BY MEANS OF

NUMERICAL SIMULATION.
Arthur Monteiro Filho
Marcos Andr Torrezani Rodrigues
Paulo Augusto Strobel Freitas e Silva
Antonio Cesar Pinho Brasil Junior
arthurmtfilho@gmail.com
marcostorrezani@gmail.com
paulostrobel@gmail.com
brasiljr@unb.br
University of Brasilia - UnB
Campus Darcy Ribeiro, 70910-900, Brasilia, Distrito Federal, Brazil
Abstract. . Nowadays the use of wind turbines has been increasing sharply due to the low
environmental impact. However, this renewable energy is commonly linked to large open fields,
far away from the great city centres where most of the consumers are. The present work aims to
study the behaviour of a 1m diameter turbine placed on the top of a building by Computational
Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique using Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) method and
SST turbulence model . In this sense, this study focuses on a comparison of the performance of
the turbine in two configurations: open field and on the top of a building. The CFD simulations
revealed that the latter one shows some improvements on power converted for some reasons.
Firstly, as the turbine is placed in high altitude, the velocity can reach greater values and
consequently it can convert more power. Secondly, due to the presence of the building the
velocity increase nearby the turbine, consequently bigger values of coefficient power can be
achieved. On other hand, as the building increase on the turbulence on this zone, a velocity
instability is also expected.
Keywords: Wind turbine,CFD, Urban Area

CILAMCE 2016
Proceedings of the XXXVII Iberian Latin-American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering

Suzana Moreira Avila

(Editor), ABMEC, Braslia, DF, Brazil, November 6-9, 2016

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SMALL WIND TURBINE INSTALLED ON THE TOP OF A BUILDING

BY MEANS OF NUMERICAL SIMULATION

Introduction

The electricity power distribution is an important issue which affects in many aspects of
society, such as environment impact and efficiency. Generally, power plants are far away from
urban center. In this sense, according to LLucon et al. (2009), the relationship between energy suppliers and its demands strongly depends on political matter, for instance Chile rely
upon distribution of natural gas which come from Argentina, which also import it from Bolivia. Therefore, the energy track from the power plant to the end consumer passes through
many protocols and political issues, which increase its cost for people. One way to overcome
this problem is to bring the energy production to the urban area by using technologies such as
wind turbines and solar panels. Concerning the former one, Syngellakis et al. (2006) conducted
a project called WINEUR, which tracked the reason of companies to install wind turbines in
urban centers. According to them, most of turbines, 46%, are set up for educational purposes,
26% for environmental issues, 20% to improve the company public image and only 4% for financial reasons. Regarding win turbine locations, the majority still placed on parks and isolated
residences for rural applications. As urban obstacles bring complex phenomena to flow, such
as turbulence and pressure drop, a study of the surrounding environment must be taken into
account. According to Lu & Ip (2009) important factors like building roof shape and distance
and height of buildings around causes an influence on power converted by the turbine. Due to
the development in the environmental boundary layer as high it goes greater the velocity will
be, then the most favourable place to install a wind turbine is on the top of the building. Focusing on roof shape, Padmanabhan (2013) also shows that an inclined structure just before the
turbine may increase the power converted, as this feature drives the more flow through the rotor.
Computational Fluid Dynamics, well known as CFD, is the set of methodologies that enables
the computer to provide a numerical simulation of fluid flows. It means that the physical laws
that govern the fluid behavior is in a virtual environment, where we can visualize the whole
prototype system and how it will works with amazing levels of realism before experiments takes
place. Then, so as to optimize a wind turbine system, CFD simulations is crucial. The air flow
conditions and turbine performance can be evaluated and the whole system can be redesigned
in order to adapt it for specific case. In this sense, the cost can be dramatically reduced by using
a CFD analysis. This works aims on compare the power converted by the wind turbine placed
in two environments: top of building and open field. In regard to this matter, first the fluid
flow simulation around the building was done in order to identify the best position to install the
turbine. Then, a CFD simulation were done of the turbine placed on this position and its results
of power coefficient were compared to the same turbine in open field. In addition, this analysis
includes a basic modification on boundary conditions using a plane of symmetry in order to
assess the performance of row of multiples as shown in figure 1.

CILAMCE 2016
Proceedings of the XXXVII Iberian Latin-American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering

Suzana Moreira Avila

(Editor), ABMEC, Braslia, DF, Brazil, November 6-9, 2016

Filho, A. M., Rodrigues, A.T., Silva. P.A.S., Junior, A.C.P.B

Figure 1: An example of turbines installed side by side in a real building Tabrizi et al. (2014).

Numerical Modelling

The flow is considered as incompressible and fully turbulent, therefore, it is governed by

the Navier-Stokes equations. The turbulent phenomena were considered in that manner that
all eddy scales were fully modelled in Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach.
Hence, the governing equations of the flow are the continuity and momentum equations which
are described, respectively, as follows:

ui = 0,
xi


uj
p

uj
0 0
+ ui
=
+
2Sij ui uj + fj ,
t
xi
xj xi

(1)

(2)

where ui are the velocity components, is the density, p is the pressure, is the viscosity and
fi is a force per unit of volume which in turbomachinery simulations may be represented by
the Coriolis and centrifugal contributions, for example. In this way, the turbulent contribution
0 0
is represented by the Reynolds Stress Tensor, ij = ui uj , which must be modelled (Pope 2000,
Davidson 2004). As Shear-Stress Transport (SST) presents a great results for wall-bound flows,
even in separated regions as described by Mo & Lee (2012), Moshfegh & Xie (2012) and Menter
et al. (2003). Therefore, in the present work the SST turbulence was applied.
The simulations of this work were carried out using ANSYS CFX, which is a commercial
CILAMCE 2016
Proceedings of the XXXVII Iberian Latin-American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering

Suzana Moreira Avila

(Editor), ABMEC, Braslia, DF, Brazil, November 6-9, 2016

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SMALL WIND TURBINE INSTALLED ON THE TOP OF A BUILDING

BY MEANS OF NUMERICAL SIMULATION

CFD code based on the ?nite-volume method with an unstructured parallelized coupled algebraic multigrid solver with a second order advection scheme and second order overall accuracy.
A commercial 3-bladed rotor with 1,02m called InstaBreeze i-500 was used in this work.
Then, its geometrical model was obtained in extensive three-dimensional scanning process, as
can be seen in figure 2.

Figure 2: Turbine geometry

The computational domain were set in order to take into account a section of the building.
This strategy were done so as to apply an symmetry condition and perform a numerical simulation of a set of turbines side by side. In addition, since the flow around the building and
through the turbine requires a powerful computational resource and large domain, the dimensions represented here were simplified in order to solve the flow just in the top of the building,
which is the region of interest. So as to get information about the flow around the building
and know where is region with greatest velocity, two domains were constructed: One with the
turbine and another without it. The boundary conditions of them are in majority the same. The
only difference is on the region surrounding the turbine, which is considered as rotational. In
this case, the domain is divided into two subdomains: stationary and rotational. The former one
has dimensions as described in figure 3. The later one has a shape of a cylinder with 0.35 m
depth and 5.5 m of radius. The boundary conditions were applied in the computational domain
as follows:
Inlet velocity : a Dirichlet boundary condition which is imposed an uniform velocity
normal of 10m/s to the face with turbulence of 5%. Then, the pressure field is determined
in a matter to satisfy transport equations.
Atmospheric pressure: where applied in outlet, top and bottom surface. Then, these
regions allow the flow come in and out from the computational in a way to solve the
transport equations.
No Slip: were applied to the building and rotor surfaces, consequently the relative velocity
of the fluid particle on the solid surface is zero.
Interface: in RANS simulations a rotational reference frame must be imposed inside the
rotational subdomain. Therefore, the rotor has a fixed position and the governing equations are solved considering a modified gravitational acceleration by taking into account
the Coriolis and centrifugal components.
CILAMCE 2016
Proceedings of the XXXVII Iberian Latin-American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering

Suzana Moreira Avila

(Editor), ABMEC, Braslia, DF, Brazil, November 6-9, 2016

Filho, A. M., Rodrigues, A.T., Silva. P.A.S., Junior, A.C.P.B

Symmetry: was applied on the lateral surfaces. In this condition, zero normal velocity at
symmetry plane.
rotational subdomain: was applied an angular velocity ranging acording from 700rev/min
to 1000 rev/min .
ric

e
osph
Atm
e
r
u
s
pres

Symmetry
c
heri
osp
Atm ssure
pre

20 D

20

12.8 D

e
e
rfac
inte ce fram
n
e
r
Refe

No slip
X

Inle

20

7.2

Atmospheric
pressure

Figure 3: Setup of the computational domain.

The mesh refinement were applied on regions more likely to have greater gradient of quantities, such as close from the roof building edge, rotor surface and wake behind the turbine as
can be seen on figure 4. Then, the mesh used in all simulations has approximately 7.8 106
nodes.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 4: Mesh used in the simulation. (a) all domain, (b) zoom region (c) blade surface refinement.
CILAMCE 2016
Proceedings of the XXXVII Iberian Latin-American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering

Suzana Moreira Avila

(Editor), ABMEC, Braslia, DF, Brazil, November 6-9, 2016

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SMALL WIND TURBINE INSTALLED ON THE TOP OF A BUILDING

BY MEANS OF NUMERICAL SIMULATION

Results and Discussion

As mentioned before, firstly a simulation around the building were carried out as can be
seen in figure 5. It is noted that close from the roof surface there is a recirculation zone and
just above it the axial normalized velocity (uz /u0 ) achieves the higher value. Consequently, the
region indicated in the figure seems to be the most suitable place to install the turbine in order
to reach greater performance.

U_z/U_o

most favourable
region
y
z

Figure 5: Flow around the building

As can be seen in figure X, regarding efficiency the placement of the turbine on the top of
the building increased the power coefficient (Cp = P owerconverted/(0.5areau3 ) up to 0.51
while this system in open field reached about 0.36. It is also noted that the maximum Cp is
displaced, in the open field turbine it is at 6.2 Tip Speed Ratio (TSR), u0 /r, while in the top
of building it is 8.2 TSR.
CILAMCE 2016
Proceedings of the XXXVII Iberian Latin-American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering

Suzana Moreira Avila

(Editor), ABMEC, Braslia, DF, Brazil, November 6-9, 2016

Filho, A. M., Rodrigues, A.T., Silva. P.A.S., Junior, A.C.P.B

Figure 6: Cp T SR chart

Conclusions

Through the results presented in this work is clearly noted regarding a turbine in urban
areas it is crucial a study of the position of turbine. In this sense, the numerical results also
showed that a turbine placed in the roof of a building can dramatically increase its performance.
It is worth mentioning the problem of high turbulence region caused by the edge of the building
which should be well studied before undertaking such a project. Some improvements on the
edge shape, such as smoothing it, may also contribute to a better turbine performance, as this
measure could reduce the recirculation region.

CILAMCE 2016
Proceedings of the XXXVII Iberian Latin-American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering

Suzana Moreira Avila

(Editor), ABMEC, Braslia, DF, Brazil, November 6-9, 2016

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