A computational study on building’s roof shapes to utilize wind energy: Renewable energy application in Bangladesh

Abstract

Mounting wind turbines on roof-tops of commercial and residential buildings can be a very promising source of power generation. This study emphasizes on three different designs of roof-tops to find out a suitable shape in order to utilize a particular design as an accelerator of the general wind flow. A computational study was carried out among these shapes namely half circular, straight convergent and curved convergent. The CFD tool ANSYS Fluent was used to analyze the velocity profiles at different locations of the roof-tops. In addition, suitable locations were also studied to mount the turbines. Case study shows that Chittagong, Comilla and some certain places in Dhaka have the minimal wind speed to initiate the turbine to generate energy. A newly designed micro wind-turbine has been proposed as an outcome of this study with a view to harness the wind speed efficiently in the perspective of Bangladesh.Mounting wind turbines on roof-tops of commercial and residential buildings can be a very promising source of power generation. This study emphasizes on three different designs of roof-tops to find out a suitable shape in order to utilize a particular design as an accelerator of the general wind flow. A computational study was carried out among these shapes namely half circular, straight convergent and curved convergent. The CFD tool ANSYS Fluent was used to analyze the velocity profiles at different locations of the roof-tops. In addition, suitable locations were also studied to mount the turbines. Case study shows that Chittagong, Comilla and some certain places in Dhaka have the minimal wind speed to initiate the turbine to generate energy. A newly designed micro wind-turbine has been proposed as an outcome of this study with a view to harness the wind speed efficiently in the perspective of Bangladesh.