With increasing visible effects of fossil fuel on our climate, the world is desperately looking for alternative sources of energy. The two most promising alternatives are solar energy and wind energy. The wind energy harvesting basically happens through wind turbines. Wind-generated rotary motion in turbines, which through appropriate circuitry and gear system, is converted into electric power. Different turbine designs function well in different wind pattern. We are always in pursuit of best wind turbines shapes design. It would be very helpful to have a computer framework where one can input any conceivable turbine design and be able to see its efficiency. Our group is working on developing such a design testing framework. One particular example is presented here. Design of a typical savonius wind turbine is placed in a virtual wind tunnel and power output is measured. The results are compared to published experimental works and validations are very satisfactory. Flow around the turbines is solved using OpenFOAM.

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We are expert in solving Fluid-Structure-Interaction (FSI) problems. All our work are built over open source codes like OpenFOAM, Gmsh. If you need our help in FSI simulations for your applications, contact me at ajit.kumar@snu.edu.in.