Abstract
On-site renewable energy generation in the built environment can be achieved by incorporating wind turbines in the integral design of buildings. Passages through buildings are considered promising to strengthen the local wind resource availability but information concerning their design and performance is scarce. Therefore, two key design parameters that can enhance the wind energy performance of ducted openings in high-rise buildings are addressed and optimized via CFD simulations: the fillet radius (r) of the opening and the duct diameter (d0). 3D steady RANS simulations are performed and validated with wind tunnel data from the literature. Fillets are shown to suppress flow separation, thereby enhancing the magnitude and uniformity of the wind speed in the duct and reducing the turbulent kinetic energy. With a reference diameter d0 = D, the best-performing configuration has a normalized fillet radius r/d0 = 0.2, which increases the average wind speed in the duct by 65% and the wind power by 354%. Modifying the duct diameter alone has limited influence. However, combining a larger duct diameter d0 = 1.5D with fillets with r/d0 = 0.4, can yield up to 78% increase in average wind speed and 650% in wind power density. Findings indicate that the dimensionless wind speed in the duct (U/U0) scales closely in proportion to the normalized fillet radius (r/d0). With these results, the present study demonstrates the aerodynamic advantage of ducted openings in buildings and identifies relevant design conditions required to improve the wind resource availability for the prospective implementation of wind turbines.
Highlights
The wind resource, carrying an estimated kinetic energy of around 1.7 million terawatt-hour (TWh) in the Earth’s atmosphere [1], can provide a renewable alternative for power generation with low envi ronmental and human-health impacts, reduced carbon emissions and a relatively large availability, which can be very cost-effective against conventional power generation alternatives under certain conditions (e. g., Refs. [2,3,4])
The present study demonstrates the aerodynamic advantage of ducted openings in buildings and identifies relevant design conditions required to improve the wind resource availability for the prospective implementation of wind turbines
The adoption of the steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach for this study was moti vated by its documented reasonable performance for urban wind energy and building aerodynamic studies and the significantly lower computational costs compared to scale-resolving simulation techniques (SRS)
Summary
The wind resource, carrying an estimated kinetic energy of around 1.7 million terawatt-hour (TWh) in the Earth’s atmosphere [1], can provide a renewable alternative for power generation with low envi ronmental and human-health impacts, reduced carbon emissions and a relatively large availability, which can be very cost-effective against conventional power generation alternatives under certain conditions (e. g., Refs. [2,3,4]). In spite of these past studies on BIWT, there is still very limited in formation concerning the exploitation of wind energy by means of channels or passages within buildings This has been consid ered as one of the most promising options for integrating wind turbines in the built environment in terms of wind concentrating opportunities [20,22], it remains at an exploratory stage with very few materialized projects (e.g., the Pearl River tower in Guangzhou, China and the Strata SE1 tower in London, UK) and limited published research supporting.
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