Design and development of water tunnel for flow visualization study on micro-hydrokinetic turbine
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Date
2018
Authors
Tong Poh Eng
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Abstract
A water tunnel is an experimental facility utilized for testing the hydrodynamic behavior of submerged bodies in flowing water. Water tunnel can be designed and developed to visualize a wide range of flow and one of its ability is to visualize the flow behavior over different objects and structures hence studying the phenomenon of boundary layer such as the vortex induced, flow separation, turbulence and the others. For the current project, a micro-hydrokinetic turbine model is to be placed in the test section of the water tunnel to visualize and study the flow behavior around the model. Hence a water tunnel that capable to mimic and simulate the Malaysia river flow velocity conditions (0 – 0.6 𝑚𝑠 −1 ) for the micro-hydrokinetic turbine model to be tested with generated range of mean water flow velocity of 0 – 0.7957 𝑚𝑠 −1 at the test section of dimension of 0.25𝑚 × 0.25𝑚 × 0.85𝑚 (W × H × L) is designed, developed, fabricated and analyzed with maximum deviation of mean water flow velocity across the test section with 3.43% only. The design criteria of the components of the water tunnel are discussed in this thesis as well. From the quantitative analysis of the water tunnel, the best configuration of the components of the water tunnel consisting the components of inlet flow guide, exit flow guide, flow conditioning system and screen. The turbulence intensity level of the velocity profiles at the test section capable to reach low turbulence level (9.66%) at the mean water velocity of 0.3440 𝑚𝑠 −1 . In addition, dye injection system is also designed and developed as the flow visualization technique to visualize the flow structures around the micro-hydrokinetic turbine model in the water tunnel designed and developed. The flow visualization experiment is conducted at mean water V velocity of 0.0250 𝑚𝑠 −1 . The red dyes and blue dyes are founded have higher contrast level compare with both the water and yellow dyes. They capable to produce high pictorial representation of the flow behavior around the micro-hydrokinetic turbine model.