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COAXIAL VETT CFD STUDY
In February 2014 VerdErg Renewable Energy commissioned ARUP to undertake a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis on the coaxial VETT with the aim of recreating the results from the laboratory trials.
ARUP successfully developed a 3D Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) model of the coaxial device that calculated the VETT performance to within a few percent of the results measured in the laboratory; the first time this has been achieved.
Numerous device configurations were analysed in CFD with the results compared against the equivalent laboratory results providing confidence in the model predictions.
Image produced by ARUP
CFD is a proving to be powerful development tool as it’s not only providing further insights to the fluid behaviour, which could not be determined in the laboratory, but new configurations have been tested far more easily and cheaply than in the laboratory.
The vast amount of data produced from the CFD is guiding the development work and improvements have already been made to the coaxial VETT with more to follow in the near future and beyond.