Abstract
One of the main challenges of urban wind energy harvesting is the understanding of the flow characteristics where urban wind turbines are to be installed. Among viable locations within the urban environment, high‐rise buildings are particularly promising due to the elevated height and relatively undisturbed wind conditions. Most research studies on high‐rise buildings deal with the calculation of the wind loads in terms of surface pressure. In the present paper, flow pattern characteristics are investigated for a typical high‐rise building in a variety of configurations and wind directions in wind tunnel tests. The aim is to improve the understanding of the wind energy
resource in the built environment and give designers meaningful data on the positioning strategy of wind turbines to improve performance. In addition, the study provides suitable and realistic turbulence characteristics to be reproduced in physical or numerical simulations of urban wind turbines for several locations above the roof region of the building. The study showed that at a height of 10 m from the roof surface, the flow resembles atmospheric turbulence with an enhanced turbulence intensity above 10% combined with large length scales of about 200 m. Results also
showed that high‐rise buildings in clusters might provide a very suitable configuration for the installation of urban wind turbines, although there is a strong difference between the performance of a wind turbine installed at the centre of the roof and one installed on the leeward and windward corners or edges, depending on the wind direction.
resource in the built environment and give designers meaningful data on the positioning strategy of wind turbines to improve performance. In addition, the study provides suitable and realistic turbulence characteristics to be reproduced in physical or numerical simulations of urban wind turbines for several locations above the roof region of the building. The study showed that at a height of 10 m from the roof surface, the flow resembles atmospheric turbulence with an enhanced turbulence intensity above 10% combined with large length scales of about 200 m. Results also
showed that high‐rise buildings in clusters might provide a very suitable configuration for the installation of urban wind turbines, although there is a strong difference between the performance of a wind turbine installed at the centre of the roof and one installed on the leeward and windward corners or edges, depending on the wind direction.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3641 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-23 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Energies |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 14 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Jul 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding: This research was funded by the COST Action TU1804 WINERCOST—“Wind Energy to enhance the concept of Smart cities” through a Short Term Scientific Mission to conduct the experiments. The support of the European Commission’s Framework Program “Horizon 2020” through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) “AEOLUS4FUTURE—Efficient harvesting of the wind energy” (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014: Grant agreement no. 643167) is also acknowledged. Also, this work was supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) under project reference C19/SR/13639741.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
- wind tunnel; building aerodynamics; urban wind energy; turbulent flows
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
- Fuel Technology
- Energy Engineering and Power Technology
- Energy (miscellaneous)
- Control and Optimization
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
