Morphing Omni-directional Panel Mechanism: A novel active roof design for improving the performance of the wind delivery system

The INVELOX is a wind delivery system which captures the wind from every directions and then funnels the flow to the ground-level generator. In this paper, a novel roof mechanism has been introduced to improve the performance of the wind delivery system. The proposed mechanism, called Morphing Omni-directional Panel Mechanism (MOPM), is a flexible roof designed for INVELOX system to improve the system efficiency by increasing the amount of captured air while reducing the wind escaping, concurrently. Leveraging the flexible structure, the MOPM roof enables the wind delivery system to operate over a wider range of wind speeds (1–55 m/s). On the other hand, a combination of an adaptive fuzzy system and PI anti-windup controller has been designed for the MOPM. Using the proposed control system, the roof can properly orient to the desired direction. The performance of the control system has been validated using the experimental and simulated analysis. The CFD simulations along with the experimental analysis have been done to evaluate the performance of the proposed roof design. The results show that the MOPM ameliorates the flow speed at the Venturi section by at least 6% when the outside wind speed is low. Unlike the INVELOX, MOPM can accelerate the flow speed at the Venturi section to the optimum speed (25 m/s) when the outside wind speed is around 10 m/s. The MOPM is capable of maintaining the flow speed in the Venturi section at 25 m/s in high outside wind speeds up to 55 m/s. •The efficiency of the wind delivery system is improved by introducing a flexible controllable roof mechanism.•The proposed roof design reduces the escaping air.•A combination of an adaptive fuzzy system and PI anti-windup controller is introduced to control the roof orientation.•The control system is numerically and experimentally evaluated.•Using the proposed roof mechanism the wind delivery system can operate in wider range of wind speed.