A wind flow pattern study using CFD: Why palm trees, not coconut trees resist against wind?

Abstract

During cyclone slender trees like banana, coconut, etc., are getting affected. Perhaps, many tree branches are broken and in some trees are fully uprooted due to the wind force. But the behavior of the palm tree during wind is quite different from other trees. The survival of a palm tree during cyclone has many reasons such as rambling roots, a wiry trunk and the aerodynamic features. In order to investigate the wind effect on trees, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used. It is one of the robust design tools for various fluid flow and wind Engineering problems. During cyclone when the wind blows the natural frequency of the wind should not coincide with the shedding frequency of the vertices attacking body if the frequency matches then failure will occur. This paper compares the behavior of palm and coconut tree during wind force. In order to investigate the wind behavior around palm and coconut trees, horizontal cross-section wiry trunk of palm and coconut tree is modelled using solid work and the flow pattern is studied using ANSYS Fluent 19.2 software. From the results, it is observed that the wiry trunk of the palm tree splits the wind and is well resistant to wind attack.