Date of Award
12-1-2021
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Mathias, James
Abstract
Growing concern over the effects of carbon emissions and resulting climate change have highlighted the need to move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable sources of energy. Wind energy is a popular and proven renewables technology that it is mostly implemented in rural environments. For urban settings, building mounted wind turbines could be a solution as a local source of renewable energy generation. In this study, the open-source Computational Fluid Dynamics software OpenFOAM is used to determine the wind speed on a high-rise rooftop. The simulation results are then used in tandem with real wind data from the 2020 calendar year to determine the performance of a turbine on the roof of the building. The reference turbine is the QuietRevolution QR6 vertical axis wind turbine, a real commercial turbine with an energy rating of 7 kW. The total annual energy yield was calculated to be 42,557 kWh. In addition to the energy calculations, brief analyses were performed on the spacing requirements of the turbine and on the vibration behavior of the building frame and future research is suggested
Access
This thesis is Open Access and may be downloaded by anyone.