Albert Chen
Pronouns: He/They
Research Mentor(s): Michael Bernitsas
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering / Engineering
Program: UROP
Session: Session 5 (2:40pm – 3:30pm)
Authors:
Abstract
Green energy is essential for the future of our planet. Climate change impacts are imminent, and any alternative energy is worth studying. Hydrokinetic energy in oceans and rivers is vast, clean and renewable. Fluid structure instabilities, and specifically vortex induced vibrations and galloping, are catastrophic for human-made structures in water or air flows. On the other hand they can be utilized to harvest energy from flows by enhancing and controlling such instabilities. By using OpenFOAM, a open source computational fluid dynamics code (CFD), these phenomena can be simulated and studied parametrically for different water flow speeds. Moreover, computer simulation reduces the amount of time between testing, and gathering data; instead of having to build the physical cylinders and the water tanks to test the physical conditions. In this project three cylinders are mounted on springs and the resulting three oscillators are placed in tandem in a flow. The cylinders respond in instabilities and convert hydrokinetic energy to mechanical in the oscillators. The project is on-going, and experimental results are available. CFD provides complementary information to experiments and specifically visualization of the interaction between turbulent wakes and bodies. This is a powerful tool to facilitate explaining the observed phenomena. The expected outcome is to identify oscillatory patterns of the three cylinders in tandem, that harvest optimal energy.
