Estudo experimental de escoamentos sobre colinas para obter potencial eólico

Abstract

As a consequence of the climatic changes and incentives for the pursuit of renewable energy sources that result in fewer environmental impacts, it is necessary to develop and conduct research in these areas. With this in mind, this work aims to experimentally study the interactions of wind flow with hills; in particular, it seeks to plot velocity profiles at certain positions – especially above the hill –, perform comparisons between these points, and identify positions with better wind potential. Provided by the company Eletrobras/FURNAS, the LATEF laboratory at UFG has the necessary equipment for conducting this experiment, including the Pitot Tube, Wind Tunnel, manometers, and data collection software. Based on this, data acquisitions were made to plot three vertical wind speed profiles along the horizontal direction relative to the hill: one upstream of the hill, one at the central position (which coincides with the hilltop), and the third at the position corresponding to 3/4 of the hill's width, and a wind potential curve is constructed from the obtained speeds. The experiments were conducted in the Reynolds number range between 8, 5 · 10 and 4 8, 7 · 10 4 , based on the height of the hill. The results show that, although counterintuitive, there are positions downstream of the hilltop where the wind potential significantly increases compared to the wind potential upstream of the hill. Finally, the resulting flow tubes from the wind-hill interaction and the recirculation areas were also observed.