Chowdhury Mohammad Jubayer

Big Data from Big Experiments. The WindEEE Dome

For several decades now experimental fluid mechanics has been relying on classical techniques mainly harboured by wind tunnels to deal with mostly canonical problems and therefore have lagged behind the newer computational fluid dynamics advances with applications to multiscale, multi-physics fluid phenomena closer to real life complexities.

Numerical Simulations of Wind Effects on an Array of Ground Mounted Solar Panels

In this study, numerical simulations using unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach with Shear Stress Transport (SST) k-ω turbulence closure are employed to investigate the wind loads and wind flow field of a ground mounted solar panel array. Atmospheric boundary layer wind profiles for open terrain roughness with Reynolds number of 2.2×106, based on the wind speed at the lower edge and the chord length of a stand-alone system, are employed. Four different wind directions (0°, 45°, 135° and 180°) are considered. The numerical modeling approach employed in this study is validated for a stand-alone solar panel system by comparing the surface pressures with the study by [1] and the velocity field with a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurement carried out in the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel I at the Western University, Canada. Analyzing the wind flow field for the array configuration shows that for 0° and 180° wind directions, all trailing rows are in the complete wake of the first windward row. It is also shown that in terms of maximum drag and lift, 0° and 180° wind directions are the critical wind directions with the first windward row being the critical row. On the other hand, in terms of overturning moment, 45° and 135° are the critical wind directions, with similar overturning moment coefficients for each row.Copyright

Conceptual design study to determine optimal enclosure vent configuration for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE)

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE; formerly Next Generation Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) is a dedicated, 10m aperture, wide-field, fiber-fed multi-object spectroscopic facility proposed as an upgrade to the existing Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea. The enclosure vent configuration design study is the last of three studies to examine the technical feasibility of the proposed MSE baseline concept. The enclosure vent configuration study compares the aero-thermal performance of three enclosure ventilation configurations based on the predicted dome thermal seeing and air flow attenuation over the enclosure aperture opening of a Calotte design derived from computational fluid dynamics simulations. In addition, functional and operation considerations such as access and servicing of the three ventilation configurations is discussed.