Airfoil Self-Noise - Investigation with Particle Image Velocimetry

Noise generated aerodynamically by the airflow over a lifting surface is often of concern for applications as diverse as air and ground transportation, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning systems, and wind turbines. The thesis describes the application of advanced optical flow measurements techniques for the visualization and description of...

Great expectations for offshore wind turbines: Emulation of wind farm design to anticipate their value for customers

To date, the technical feasibility of making electricity from offshore wind energy has been convincingly proven. However, the current challenge is to reduce the costs of this form of energy. One of the aspects playing a role in cost reduction is the optimisation of the wind turbine. The wind turbine influences the costs of various elements of an...

Aerodynamic Mechanisms of Flapping Flight

The growing need for mobile aerial platforms capable of performing reconnaissance tasks and gathering intelligence in hazardous and physically inaccessible areas has given rise to an increasing interest in the development of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), in view of their potential capabilities of versatile and highly maneuverable flight....

Uncertainty quantification in particle image velocimetry and advances in time-resolved image and data analysis

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a well-established technique for the measurement of the flow velocity in a two or three-dimensional domain. As in any other technique, PIV data is affected by measurement errors, defined as the difference between the measured velocity and its actual value, which is unknown. Aim of uncertainty quantification is...

Advances in Model-Based Design of Flexible and Prompt Energy Systems -- The CO2 Capture Plant at the Buggenum IGCC Power Station as a Test Case

Pre-combustion CO2 capture applied to integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants is a promising technical solution to reduce CO2 emissions due to fossil-fuelled electricity generation in order to meet environmental targets in a carbon-constrained future. The pre-combustion capture process allows to effectively remove CO2 from...

Critical point anomalies include expansion shock waves

From first-principle fluid dynamics, complemented by a rigorous state equation accounting for critical anomalies, we discovered that expansion shock waves may occur in the vicinity of the liquid-vapor critical point in the two-phase region. Due to universality of near-critical thermodynamics, the result is valid for any common pure fluid in...

Measurement of turbulence spectra using scanning pulsed wind lidars

Turbulent velocity spectra, as measured by a scanning pulsed wind lidar (WindCube), are analyzed. The relationship between ordinary velocity spectra and lidar derived spectra is mathematically very complex, and deployment of the three-dimensional spectral velocity tensor is necessary. The resulting scanning lidar spectra depend on beam angles,...