Energy harvesting using flapping foils has attracted significant attention in the last 10 years. In contrast to conventional turbines, which rely on attached flow for high efficiency, a flapping-foil turbine exploits the separation of fluid flow near the nose of the foil to form a leading-edge vortex, resulting in high instantaneous forces. To reduce the computational cost of simulating a flapping foil undergoing high angles of attack (up to 90 deg), a discrete vortex method that incorporates leading-edge flow separation is used in this study. Corrections using semi-empirical functions are introduced to account for the effects of trailing-edge flow separation. Instantaneous lift and power coefficient as well as the mean power coefficient and efficiency from the discrete vortex method with separation corrections are compared against those from a dynamic stall model and computational-fluid-dynamics results obtained by the lattice Boltzmann method. The discrete vortex method provides better agreement with computational-fluid-dynamics simulations compared to the dynamic stall model.
Discrete Vortex Method with Flow Separation Corrections for Flapping-Foil Power Generators
AIAA journal ; 55 , 2
2017
Article (Journal)
English
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