University of Surrey
ContactEnvironmental Flow Research Centre (EFRC), EnFlo LaboratoryDr. Philip Hancock Fluids Research Centre Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK phone: +44 1483 689625 e-mail: p.hancock@surrey.ac.uk web: www.surrey.ac.uk |
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The EFRC, Enflo Laboratory is part of the Fluid Research Centre (FRC) in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. The FRC brings together academic staff from all engineering disciplines, typically thirty researchers and several visiting and associate staff. The Centre is engaged in typically thirty research projects, with funding from a wide range of sources including major industrial, European and UK national grants. The research income supports major programmes of experimental research and numerical simulation. Research areas include aerodynamics, turbomachinery, vehicle aerodynamics, turbulence, wind engineering, environmental flows, chemical and bio-reactor hydrodynamics, multi-phase flows, non-newtonian fluids, osmosis. The turbomachinery work is done within the Rolls-Royce-funded University Technology Centre for Thermal and Fluid Systems. EnFlo, the Environmental Flow Research Centre, was established in 1993 as a focus for UK research activities based on laboratory scale simulation of atmospheric flow and pollutant dispersion. It is a NERC-NCAS Centre for Atmospheric Sciences and a member of the UWERN and APRIL research networks. EnFlo was established by the donation of two major facilities, a wind tunnel and a towing tank, by National Power plc to the University. Both can be operated in a density stratified mode, which gives the laboratory a unique experimental capability and also permits a very wide range of environmental conditions to be modelled. The wind tunnel has a 20m long working section, 3.5x1.5m in cross section, and is stratified by differential heating of the incoming air, together with heating and cooling of the tunnel walls. The 12m long towing tank has a 1x1m cross-section and is stratified by mixing fresh water and brine during its filling. The FRC has five other wind tunnels.
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Research groups involved
The wind power work takes place within the EnFlo laboratory part of the FRC. The current main activity is on wakes of large (5MW) wind turbines and their interactions together and on downwind machines, in both offshore and on-shore atmospheric conditions, including the effects of stratification. The work, which is primarily experimental, is being done as a partner of the (UK) EPSRC research consortium SUPERGEN-V, Wind Energy Technologies programme. The Surrey work is also being done in conjunction with Imperial College, Dept of Aeronautics, where the attention is on the loading on the rotor blades.
Facilities & Advanced Research Tools
| Laboratory | Stratified environmental flow wind tunnel, and five other wind tunnels |
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| Measuring equipment | Laser Dopper anemometry, particle image velocimetry, hot-wire anemometry, pulsed-wire anemometry, flame-ionisation concentration |
| Instrumentation Software | Labview-based software for fully automatic data control and acquisition |
| Software | Fluent, LES codes, ADMS |
R&D Strategy( Wind-flow related)
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| short | medium | long | |
| Dispersion studies in urban and industrial-plant environments |  | | |
| Wind flow over topography, momentum and scalar transport, complex terrain | | |
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| Wind power aerodynamics | | |
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| Industrial aerodynamics | | |
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