Browsing by Author "Chen, Y.K."

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    Computational and experimental investigations of an omni-flow wind turbine
    (Elsevier, 2015-03-15) Ying, P.; Chen, Y.K.; Xu, Y.G.; Tian, Y.
    Both numerical and experimental studies were conducted to evaluate the performance of an omni-flow wind turbine designed to provide renewable electricity on the top of urban buildings like skyscrapers. The numerical approach was based on Finite Volume Method (FVM) and the turbulence flow was studied with several commonly used Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes turbulence models. The results of the study were evaluated with the wind tunnel test results over a range of tip speed ratios. The numerical results showed the effect of blade number on both power output and starting capability. Although both the power and torque coefficient were improved significantly by the optimisation of the blade number, there was only a slight change when the blade number was greater than twenty. The results from wind tunnel testing also showed excellent starting capability with a starting wind velocity as low as 1.6 m/s. A numerical simulation was also conducted for the wind turbine working under non-uniform flow conditions. The numerical results have shown that the peak power coefficient of such a wind turbine under non-uniform flow, was lower than that under the uniform flow. Additionally, the applied thrust on a blade was subject to frequent and periodical changes. However, the effect of the change of thrust in magnitude and frequency was not significant. Therefore the omni-flow wind turbine has the potential to meet the challenge of unpredictable wind velocity and direction as a consequence of the urban environment.
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    Thermal analysis of phase change material board (PCMB) under weather conditions in the summer
    (Elsevier, 2016-04-25) Zhou, D.; Tian, Y.; Qu, Y.; Chen, Y.K.; Tian, Y.
    Phase Change Material Board (PCMB) has been considered as an effective way to improve the thermal comfort in either new or existing buildings. In this work, firstly the optimal melting temperatures of internal and external PCMB are given, and the optimal heat storage capacities are obtained under the idealised circumstance of considering sinusoidal changes of the room and outdoor temperatures during a day. Secondly, to study the potential energy saving from applying a PCMB, a case study of a lightweight office with real environmental conditions is carried out. The air conditioning is switched on in the model to keep the indoor temperature within thermal comfort. Using the daily energy consumption and daily thermal comfort rate as the performance criteria, the effects of major influencing factors including melting temperature, latent heat and thermal conductivity of PCMB are studied parametrically. The results show that both the external and internal PCMB can achieve better performance when the melting temperature is chosen to be slightly higher than the average indoor air temperature. In the summer, the external PCMB has a better performance than the internal PCMB because the external PCMB works not only as a heat storage system whose function is similar to the internal PCMB, but also as a thermal connection between the outdoor and indoor environment due to its thermal insulation function, which reduces the influence of the changing outdoor environment.