Simulation of airflow and aerodynamic forces acting on a commercial turbine ventilator

Full text: This study is concerned with performing simulation of airflow using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique code name FLUENT so as to visualize the flow behavior around and within turbine ventilator in addition to determining the aerodynamic forces acting on turbine ventilator during operation and comparing the simulated results to the wind tunnel experiment. To achieve this, Realizable k-ε and RSM turbulence models are used by taking advantage of moving mesh method to simulate the rotation of turbine ventilator and the consequent results are obtained through the sequential process which ensures accuracy of the computations. The results demonstrated that, the RSM turbulence model shows the best performance on flow visualization and predicting the aerodynamic forces acting on a turbine ventilator. Results from this work would lead us to a noticeable increase in efficiency of future turbine ventilator by enhancing the shape of inner vanes, and redesign them using CFD technique. (author)