When you were reading out torque results, remember that you got coordinate reference at the bottom of the wind turbine, not at the center of the rotor. So torque around Y axis is a result of bending of the whole turbine (you got coordinate reference at the bottom of the turbine). So torque results are not correct.
Hi Shane, I am trying to run a simulation on a wind turbine at the moment. Surely to work out torque, the blades need to be spinning as there will be different wind speeds across the blade? My project is trying to quantify the benefits of 'winglets', I have a very similar set up to you at the moment however I am struggling to understand how to get results that will quantify my innovation. Have you any ideas? Power/Lift/Drag would be a useful output. Thanks
Hi.. Is there any software that could actually 'simulate' the wind turbine rotors based on the impact of the wind? i.e. make the rotor assemble actually rotate with the wind? I can't seem to figure this out !
Hi Shane, This is really well explained! I have designed a turbine (savonius vertical axis wind turbine) and I want to find the wind speed at which the turbine will start rotating. Do you know how we can obtain that from solidworks flow simulation or any other software?
Did I understand you correctly when you stated that in a wind tunnel setup like this you cannot impart movement to the assembly being tested? Is this by choice or does this only apply to the particular version of SolidWorks that you are working with? Does it apply to all versions of SolidWorks across the board? Also; if it is possible to impart movement (in the case of your model, the rotation of the fan blades) how does one go about achieving this? I am able to set up the wind tunnel for my testing but ideally with the models I'm testing it would be far more beneficial in terms of collecting specific data to have my model rotating in the same manner it would if it were actually an installed and working part. I haven't tried it yet for myself and I don't know if you have either but I'll ask anyway; is it possible to create an animation of a model such as yours that does have the fan blades rotating as they would in the real world, and then installing that animated model into a flow simulation for a more real world analysis?
Hi Shane, great vid. I am building a boundary fence at home and wanted to look at various paling layouts to see how this impacts the fences ability to shelter the garden from the prevailing wind. Theoretically a solid fence with no gaps creates more turbulence behind it whereas one with gaps has less. Would my study be external or internal? Could I set it up exactly like yours with a section of fence with various configurations and put it in a similar wind tunnel? I want to do a basic study first so that I can see the reduction of wind velocity in the yard but also downstream of the fence see if the wind will flow over or through the garden beds. The other complication is that there is another fence on the opposite boundary which I suppose I should include in a later sim to see how this effects the wind that passes through/over the first fence. Any advice on how to set up this analysis? Thanks
Sorry for the late reply. In my opinion I would do two sets of studies. One internal set in a windtunnel to analyze the different sets of fence. Then once you have one you think will work the best, I would do the external flow with your whole setup. For the internal test, make sure the test is with a good length of fence. An internal set will have boundary layer effects on the edge of the tunnel that will skew your results, so you'll want to have a good length relative to your meshsize. Hope this helps, and good luck!
Hi Shane Thanks for the tutorial I have a question I am trying to analyze windload on a steel substructure and i am doing the followings 1) I model a refereance surface (representing the cladding) around the steel sub structure 2) i run the flow simulation 3) i export the results 4) i start a static study 5) in the study i exclude the referance surface from the analysis 6) i import the results of wind simulation 7) i define boundary conditions material and joints in the static study 8) when i run the study - i end up with an error ''no external load detected'' what can be the reason? can you help me with it? thanks...
Hello sir, can you help me how to find the rpm/ angular velocity of a vertical turbine in Solidworks flow simulation only given with wind speed and the specification of the turbine ( rotor diamter, blade height, chord length). Thank you and Godbless.
Hi all, how to see deformation of the round support/pipe under turbine? I need instead of turbine to simulate big surface of PV panels against strongest winds. Lets say max wind speed is around 200km/h (55m/s) and I need factor of safety 3....so panels and support should survive those extreme conditions not going in "plastic/breakage" deformation.
Hi Shane, Very good work. I have one question, How can we get the rpm of the turbine from the above study? Can we get it from SolidWorks Flow Simulation?
+Micheal Johnson You can get an estimate of the RPM using the design Tip-Speed-Ratio. This gives a ratio for the speed of the tips of the blades compared to the windspeed.
Hi Shane. Do you know how I would be able to add the ''simulation flow'' to the add in's list for a turbine I've designed in the 2016 student edition of solidworks? Thanks
The add in list shows all available add ins for you. So if it isn't there, you will need to download it from Solidworks' website. It's possible that the 2016 student edition does not include it.
Hi there, can anyone help me with my problem, please? I am trying to plot a performance curve of a Vertical axis wind turbine with a rated wind speed of 9m/s with 8 angular velocities. But in my results, the torque keeps increasing and it is impossible to make a curve. Please help or suggest what to do to solve my problem. Thank you so much.
Hi Shane . nice video. I want to do a simulation on a hair dryer / hand dryer. I want to model a thermal load on the heating element, and have a fan moving the air to the outlet. Do i have to model it in an enclosed tube such as a wind tunnel with lids? I really want to see the heat temperature and flow rate as it exits the device.
No, you don't have to simulate it in a wind tunnel. In your case you are doing internal flow through the device, and then you'd like to look at the flow as it exits the device. I believe you should be able to do that flow analysis purely with the hair dryer model itself. Just be careful with the size of your computational domain, you want it large enough to capture the flow outside of the dryer, but not too large where it will take a long time to run the simulation.
Shane Smith yeah right, especially on my ancient laptop. thanks for the advice. one more question. can I add a heater element in the flow path, so that it heats the air as it exits? I can see how to do a standard steady-state / transient thermal analysis in simulation, but I can't see how to combine this with the Flow Sim. in the standard sim, i just add a heater element and define a value for the wattage...but i dont see how to combine it.
I actually have never done a heater combined with flow. I know you can, but haven't done it myself. I recommend seeing if you can find a tutorial video on Solidworks website or elsewhere on youtube.
can anyone help me, iam using lids but when i try to give it boundary condition the it says "Face@LID2-1 is not laying on the boundary between solid and fluid region." why is that? for wind tunnel i extruded hollow square and make lids on it
Gordon Durward Solidworks doesn't allow the turbine to rotate during the simulation, so we only get forces and torques, we can't get rotational speed. You could use kinematic equations to try and solve for the rotational speed, but that assumes no energy loss which isn't accurate. My design team primarily used these simulations to analyze the torque our blades would produce at a given wind speed as well as the aerodynamic effect of the structures. If you wanted to find efficiency, (I assume that's why you wanted speed of rotation) you would need to do real wind tunnel tests and use sensors to measure your RPM for different wind speeds. Then you can use the theoretical TSR you designed the blades for and the energy present in the swept area of your turbine to determine efficiency. More advanced CFD programs allow for the turbine blades to rotate (such as FLUENT) but they are much more expensive and my team was not able to gain access to them for our design.
Shane Smith Appreciate the feedback. However, I wonder if you put a rotating region around the propeller and did an external analysis - might it not be possible set the rotating region to say 1rpm - and see the rotational torque that is computed by Solidworks Flow - then set the rotational rpm to say 10rpm - and see the rotational torque that is computed by Solidworks Flow - and from these 2 new study's - and your internal study - to estimate the rotational speed by interpolation? (Just out of interest what diameter is your "wind turbine" - since the torque of 0.022Nm appears incredibly small?)
Gordon Durward You definitely could, I'm just unsure how accurate it would be. We had large errors when we did an external flow (we got literal tons of force pushing on the turbine). This turbine had a 45 cm blade diameter, since that was the size limit for competition. Our turbines spun very fast, we had a TSR of 6 and observed speeds over 4500 rpm with wind speeds in the tunnel around 12 m/s. There's a lot of possibilities for simulations, but given the complexity of our model it was difficult to determine what was causing the errors we were observing, so we decided to go with what we knew would work, although it gave us less total information once the simulation was done. It's possible we didn't set up the external simulation correctly or that our mating on our assembly had some errors.
Shane Smith It might be worth looking at the Solidworks Tutorial Book (which I assume you will have as you say you are an academic) - Lesson 8 - which deals with the setting up of a small cooling fan that you would use in your office. You need mesh refinement in the rotating region, and the narrow channels box ticked too. The diameter of that fan in this model is about 360mm in this lesson - and runs at about 1910rpm - and requires 0.5Nm of torque. The fan in Lesson 8 obviously has a much higher aspect ratio than your one - and more than likely a different pitch too. However, for the rotational speed you have indicated (4500rpm) my notional thought is the torque for your propeller does appear very low. (You can download the file I am referring to from the Solidworks web site - see below - and you can also download the completed version - to see the setup and results). www.solidworks.co.uk/sw/support/808_ENU_HTML.htm
can we run it as a propeller? run at specific rpm say 100 rpm, then calculate average velocity just before the disk , assume it comes out to be 10 m/s, it should tell us how much average wind velocity will make it run at what rpm. like in real world if the wind is blowing at 1 m/s our turbine will rotate at or close to 100 rpm.
+Afif jamil I simply extruded a hollow square along the distance I wanted. I just picked dimensions that fit the turbine without being too close, then I used the lids tool to create the lids on it.
Hello, I am a French student and I must do a project with wind turbines. I am trying to do a simulation of an area flow at 20m / s on a wind turbine as a solidwork file. However, I can not do my computer simulation. So I turn to you and your expertise to help me if you have time to grant me. Do you have an email address to send me my solidworks model. Maybe you could do the simulation on this one and send me the results then? thank you in advance
Awesome video. Saved my ass on my dissertation big time. Great method and well explained. Thanks a lot mate!
When you were reading out torque results, remember that you got coordinate reference at the bottom of the wind turbine, not at the center of the rotor. So torque around Y axis is a result of bending of the whole turbine (you got coordinate reference at the bottom of the turbine). So torque results are not correct.
How can you change that?
Brilliantly presented! Thank you!
Wow nice idea for sketch 👍👍
Goods 😎🙏
Help please!
I don't know why my computational domain appears like a little prism on the wind turbine.
It doesn't include all the wind tunnel
Is there a problem if my wind turbine reference axis isn't the same reference axis of the input lid?
Hi Shane,
Is there is a tool that tell the solver that the blades will rotate ?
Hey, did you find the asnwer?
So if you wanted to test the efficiency of your blade configuration could you rotate the flow around them at their rpm?
Hey, did you find the asnwer?
@@w1nd312 use rotating regions
Hi Shane,
I am trying to run a simulation on a wind turbine at the moment. Surely to work out torque, the blades need to be spinning as there will be different wind speeds across the blade?
My project is trying to quantify the benefits of 'winglets', I have a very similar set up to you at the moment however I am struggling to understand how to get results that will quantify my innovation. Have you any ideas?
Power/Lift/Drag would be a useful output.
Thanks
How to plot Frequency power spectrum form FFT in vortex shedding? ie. past cylinders . Thank you
thanks Shane
Is it possible to define an angle of rotation on the rotating region ?
Hi.. Is there any software that could actually 'simulate' the wind turbine rotors based on the impact of the wind? i.e. make the rotor assemble actually rotate with the wind? I can't seem to figure this out !
Hi Shane,
This is really well explained!
I have designed a turbine (savonius vertical axis wind turbine) and I want to find the wind speed at which the turbine will start rotating. Do you know how we can obtain that from solidworks flow simulation or any other software?
Hey, did you find the asnwer?
Did I understand you correctly when you stated that in a wind tunnel setup like this you cannot impart movement to the assembly being tested? Is this by choice or does this only apply to the particular version of SolidWorks that you are working with? Does it apply to all versions of SolidWorks across the board?
Also; if it is possible to impart movement (in the case of your model, the rotation of the fan blades) how does one go about achieving this? I am able to set up the wind tunnel for my testing but ideally with the models I'm testing it would be far more beneficial in terms of collecting specific data to have my model rotating in the same manner it would if it were actually an installed and working part.
I haven't tried it yet for myself and I don't know if you have either but I'll ask anyway; is it possible to create an animation of a model such as yours that does have the fan blades rotating as they would in the real world, and then installing that animated model into a flow simulation for a more real world analysis?
I have one question to ask you, on what criteria did u select the wind tunnel dimensions. Does the simulation results depend on it?
Hi Shane, great vid. I am building a boundary fence at home and wanted to look at various paling layouts to see how this impacts the fences ability to shelter the garden from the prevailing wind. Theoretically a solid fence with no gaps creates more turbulence behind it whereas one with gaps has less. Would my study be external or internal? Could I set it up exactly like yours with a section of fence with various configurations and put it in a similar wind tunnel? I want to do a basic study first so that I can see the reduction of wind velocity in the yard but also downstream of the fence see if the wind will flow over or through the garden beds. The other complication is that there is another fence on the opposite boundary which I suppose I should include in a later sim to see how this effects the wind that passes through/over the first fence. Any advice on how to set up this analysis? Thanks
Sorry for the late reply. In my opinion I would do two sets of studies. One internal set in a windtunnel to analyze the different sets of fence. Then once you have one you think will work the best, I would do the external flow with your whole setup.
For the internal test, make sure the test is with a good length of fence. An internal set will have boundary layer effects on the edge of the tunnel that will skew your results, so you'll want to have a good length relative to your meshsize. Hope this helps, and good luck!
Hi Shane
Thanks for the tutorial
I have a question
I am trying to analyze windload on a steel substructure and i am doing the followings
1) I model a refereance surface (representing the cladding) around the steel sub structure
2) i run the flow simulation
3) i export the results
4) i start a static study
5) in the study i exclude the referance surface from the analysis
6) i import the results of wind simulation
7) i define boundary conditions material and joints in the static study
8) when i run the study - i end up with an error ''no external load detected''
what can be the reason?
can you help me with it?
thanks...
Hello sir, can you help me how to find the rpm/ angular velocity of a vertical turbine in Solidworks flow simulation only given with wind speed and the specification of the turbine ( rotor diamter, blade height, chord length). Thank you and Godbless.
Hi all, how to see deformation of the round support/pipe under turbine? I need instead of turbine to simulate big surface of PV panels against strongest winds. Lets say max wind speed is around 200km/h (55m/s) and I need factor of safety 3....so panels and support should survive those extreme conditions not going in "plastic/breakage" deformation.
Hi Shane,
Very good work.
I have one question, How can we get the rpm of the turbine from the above study?
Can we get it from SolidWorks Flow Simulation?
+Micheal Johnson You can get an estimate of the RPM using the design Tip-Speed-Ratio. This gives a ratio for the speed of the tips of the blades compared to the windspeed.
@@shanesmith7550 that is brilliant
Hi Shane. Do you know how I would be able to add the ''simulation flow'' to the add in's list for a turbine I've designed in the 2016 student edition of solidworks?
Thanks
The add in list shows all available add ins for you. So if it isn't there, you will need to download it from Solidworks' website. It's possible that the 2016 student edition does not include it.
Hi there, can anyone help me with my problem, please? I am trying to plot a performance curve of a Vertical axis wind turbine with a rated wind speed of 9m/s with 8 angular velocities. But in my results, the torque keeps increasing and it is impossible to make a curve. Please help or suggest what to do to solve my problem. Thank you so much.
Hi Shane . nice video. I want to do a simulation on a hair dryer / hand dryer. I want to model a thermal load on the heating element, and have a fan moving the air to the outlet.
Do i have to model it in an enclosed tube such as a wind tunnel with lids? I really want to see the heat temperature and flow rate as it exits the device.
No, you don't have to simulate it in a wind tunnel. In your case you are doing internal flow through the device, and then you'd like to look at the flow as it exits the device. I believe you should be able to do that flow analysis purely with the hair dryer model itself. Just be careful with the size of your computational domain, you want it large enough to capture the flow outside of the dryer, but not too large where it will take a long time to run the simulation.
Shane Smith yeah right, especially on my ancient laptop. thanks for the advice.
one more question. can I add a heater element in the flow path, so that it heats the air as it exits?
I can see how to do a standard steady-state / transient thermal analysis in simulation, but I can't see how to combine this with the Flow Sim.
in the standard sim, i just add a heater element and define a value for the wattage...but i dont see how to combine it.
I actually have never done a heater combined with flow. I know you can, but haven't done it myself. I recommend seeing if you can find a tutorial video on Solidworks website or elsewhere on youtube.
Shane Smith no worries. i'll check on the SW site. there doesn't seem to be much on youtube. it's either one or the other. cheers :)
can anyone help me, iam using lids but when i try to give it boundary condition the it says "Face@LID2-1 is not laying on the boundary between solid and fluid region." why is that?
for wind tunnel i extruded hollow square and make lids on it
never mind , my mistake
How do you work out the speed of rotation from the Solidworks Flow output data that you have extracted?
Gordon Durward Solidworks doesn't allow the turbine to rotate during the simulation, so we only get forces and torques, we can't get rotational speed. You could use kinematic equations to try and solve for the rotational speed, but that assumes no energy loss which isn't accurate.
My design team primarily used these simulations to analyze the torque our blades would produce at a given wind speed as well as the aerodynamic effect of the structures. If you wanted to find efficiency, (I assume that's why you wanted speed of rotation) you would need to do real wind tunnel tests and use sensors to measure your RPM for different wind speeds. Then you can use the theoretical TSR you designed the blades for and the energy present in the swept area of your turbine to determine efficiency.
More advanced CFD programs allow for the turbine blades to rotate (such as FLUENT) but they are much more expensive and my team was not able to gain access to them for our design.
Shane Smith Appreciate the feedback. However, I wonder if you put a rotating region around the propeller and did an external analysis - might it not be possible set the rotating region to say 1rpm - and see the rotational torque that is computed by Solidworks Flow - then set the rotational rpm to say 10rpm - and see the rotational torque that is computed by Solidworks Flow - and from these 2 new study's - and your internal study - to estimate the rotational speed by interpolation?
(Just out of interest what diameter is your "wind turbine" - since the torque of 0.022Nm appears incredibly small?)
Gordon Durward You definitely could, I'm just unsure how accurate it would be. We had large errors when we did an external flow (we got literal tons of force pushing on the turbine). This turbine had a 45 cm blade diameter, since that was the size limit for competition. Our turbines spun very fast, we had a TSR of 6 and observed speeds over 4500 rpm with wind speeds in the tunnel around 12 m/s.
There's a lot of possibilities for simulations, but given the complexity of our model it was difficult to determine what was causing the errors we were observing, so we decided to go with what we knew would work, although it gave us less total information once the simulation was done. It's possible we didn't set up the external simulation correctly or that our mating on our assembly had some errors.
Shane Smith It might be worth looking at the Solidworks Tutorial Book (which I assume you will have as you say you are an academic) - Lesson 8 - which deals with the setting up of a small cooling fan that you would use in your office. You need mesh refinement in the rotating region, and the narrow channels box ticked too. The diameter of that fan in this model is about 360mm in this lesson - and runs at about 1910rpm - and requires 0.5Nm of torque.
The fan in Lesson 8 obviously has a much higher aspect ratio than your one - and more than likely a different pitch too. However, for the rotational speed you have indicated (4500rpm) my notional thought is the torque for your propeller does appear very low.
(You can download the file I am referring to from the Solidworks web site - see below - and you can also download the completed version - to see the setup and results).
www.solidworks.co.uk/sw/support/808_ENU_HTML.htm
external case use internal?
how to calculate rpm using this information? if velocity is 17 m/s, what would be the rpm?
you can use the theoretical Tip-speed-ratio to calculate the rotational speed.
can we run it as a propeller? run at specific rpm say 100 rpm, then calculate average velocity just before the disk , assume it comes out to be 10 m/s, it should tell us how much average wind velocity will make it run at what rpm. like in real world if the wind is blowing at 1 m/s our turbine will rotate at or close to 100 rpm.
is this simulation for wind force?. if not, how to do simulation about the wind force for real life?
How did you create the wind tunnel?
+Afif jamil I simply extruded a hollow square along the distance I wanted. I just picked dimensions that fit the turbine without being too close, then I used the lids tool to create the lids on it.
This is not working for me, the air is passing straight though the object with no change to it's path or velocity. NEED HELP!
Ad thickness.... Simulation only works for "solid" objects.
I had the same problem when I started.
I have few question about analysis is it possible to you email so i can send you all my question please
Hello, I am a French student and I must do a project with wind turbines. I am trying to do a simulation of an area flow at 20m / s on a wind turbine as a solidwork file. However, I can not do my computer simulation. So I turn to you and your expertise to help me if you have time to grant me. Do you have an email address to send me my solidworks model. Maybe you could do the simulation on this one and send me the results then? thank you in advance
Have you an email adress ? Im a french students and I need help about a flow simulation.
Then rotor is static wrong angles of attack are created on the blades
why didn't you use external flow instead of internal?
Hi Shane can u give me ur exampl and thanx :)