Print Email Facebook Twitter Low and High Fidelity Aerodynamic Simulations for Airborne Wind Energy Box Wings Title Low and High Fidelity Aerodynamic Simulations for Airborne Wind Energy Box Wings Author Buendía Vela, Gabriel (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering) Contributor Schmehl, R. (mentor) Eijkelhof, D. (graduation committee) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Programme Aerospace Engineering | Aerodynamics and Wind Energy Date 2022-07-01 Abstract Airborne wind energy systems convert the kinetic energy of wind into usable power. In general terms, this power is proportional to the ratio CL3/CD2 of aerodynamic coefficients. From a structural perspective, the thickness-to-chord ratio of conventional AWE wings needs to be high to withstand the high aerodynamic loads. The box-wing concept opens the possibility of exploring a broader range of airfoils since structural loads can be redistributed with reinforcements between the two wings. This study aims to develop an automatic process for constructing a finite volume CFD mesh from a parametrized box-wing geometry, which is generally the most time-demanding part of CFD analysis. These analyses provide an accurate estimate of the viscous drag acting on box wing designs. In addition, this study aims to define a criterion of equivalence between a box wing and a conventional wing, and obtain the reference design by optimization using panel methods for fast aerodynamic computations. The aerodynamic tools used for this study are a steady panel method (APAME) and Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes simulations using a k-ω SST turbulence model (OpenFOAM). The computational framework is ultimately suitable for aero-structural optimization of a boxwing because of the high degree of automation and the reduced number of design parameters. Subject Box wingAerodynamicsAirborne wind energy To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:cb622969-16bf-4da8-aa7e-9e8109b935dd Bibliographical note https://github.com/gabrielebuendiavela/aerABox Code Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights © 2022 Gabriel Buendía Vela Files PDF TUD_MT_Gabriel_Buendia.pdf 24.97 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:cb622969-16bf-4da8-aa7e-9e8109b935dd/datastream/OBJ/view