Advancing tornado-like vortex (TLV) generation in straight-line wind simulators: An LES study

This paper investigates the capability of rotating louvers/blades to generate and control tornado-like vortices (TLVs) using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) in straight-line wind simulators. A novel computational approach (in wind engineering) is employed to simulate flow around rotating louvers, which involves dynamic meshing using the Arbitrary Mesh Interface (AMI) technique and the application of pimpleDyMFoam solver to handle the complexities of dynamic meshing. The proposed method is expected to generate vortices from multiple pulses created by using a synchronized combination of louver motion and inflow. The generated vortices are evaluated based on three widely recognized criteria for TLV simulations: (a) the radial profile of pressure, (b) the radial profile of tangential velocity, and (c) the vertical profile of resultant velocity. Additionally, the ratios of tangential to radial speed (a measure of swirl ratio) and translational to tangential speed are evaluated to demonstrate the concept's efficacy in maintaining kinematic similarity. The results from a single pulse are examined in detail based on the criteria mentioned above to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed concept, followed by multi-pulse simulations to generate multiple vortices. The results from the single pulse and multi-pulse simulations reveal acceptable conformance with field observations and experimental data.