Adjoint based optimisation of vertical axis wind turbines

Supervisors: Professor Lin Ma, Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian, Professor Derek B Ingham

Recently vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have been more installed in urban areas than before. They are known to perform better in urban regions compared to horizontal axis wind turbines as they do not require alignment to the oncoming flow. However, these turbines are not aerodynamically efficient.

This PhD thesis involves a precise design optimisation based on adjoint techniques applied to the design of the vertical axis wind turbines. Adjoint based optimisation techniques are closely related to the fluid Navier-Stokes equations and are technically the most efficient and accurate optimisation methods applied to CFD problems.

Depending on the student's background on CFD, the general steps of the project steps are as follows:

1. Getting familiar with the CFD simulation of the VAWTs
2. Getting familiar with discrete and continuous adjoint based methods
3. Defining the case study
4. CFD simulation
5. Optimisation

For further information contact Professor Derek B Ingham (d.ingham@sheffield.ac.uk).