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ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
GEOMETRIC AND NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SEMICIRCULAR TRANSITION REGION BETWEEN THE HYDROPNEUMATIC CHAMBER AND THE CHIMNEY OF AN OSCILLATING WATER COLUMN DEVICE USING CONSTRUCTAL DESIGN
Submission Author:
Gabriel Dumont , RS
Co-Authors:
Luiz Alberto Oliveira Rocha, Yuri Theodoro Lima, Liércio Isoldi, Elizaldo dos Santos, Mateus das Neves Gomes
Presenter: Gabriel Dumont
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0223
Abstract
This paper presents a two-dimensional numerical study about the transition region between the hydropneumatic chamber and the chimney of a device that converts wave energy into electrical one, whose operating principle is the Oscillating Water Column (OWC). The objective is to maximize the hydropneumatic power, considering the semicircular geometry of the OWC device's transition region, situated between the hydropneumatic chamber and the chimney. The results are compared through the obtained value of hydropneumatic power, which changes based on the different geometry ratios applied to the OWC device's transition region. Constructal Design was employed to define the geometry that maximizes the hydropneumatic power, and a parametric study is executed through numerical evaluation, based on the Exhaustive Search method. In this case, the degrees of freedom are: the radius (r) and the ratio between the height of the hydropneumatic chamber and the length of the OWC chamber (H1/L). The constraints are: the area of the hydropneumatic chamber, the total area of the OWC chamber and the ratio between the height and length of the device's chimney (H2/l). Finally, the objective function is the maximization of the hydropneumatic power. For the numerical solution, a commercial code of computational fluid dynamics, FLUENT ®, which is based on the Finite Volume Method (FVM), is employed. The multiphase model Volume of Fluid (VOF) is applied in the treatment of water-air interaction. The computational domain is represented by a wave tank with a fixed OWC device. The obtained results show that the hydropneumatic power is maximized when r = 7.5361 m and H1/L = 0.1346. In this case, the hydrodynamic efficiency of the device was 75.625%.
Keywords
Constructal Design, Oscillating Water Column (OWC), Parametric Study, Transition Region, Constructal Design, Oscillating Water Column (OWC), Parametric Study, Transition Region, Constructal Design, Oscillating Water Column (OWC), Parametric Study, Transition Region, Constructal Design, Oscillating Water Column (OWC), Parametric Study, Transition Region
