Analysis of Wind Influence to Radio Astronomy Observations at Irbene Radio-telescope Complex

2011
Sabīne Upnere, Normunds Jēkabsons, Roberts Joffe, Valērijs Bezrukovs, Vladislavs Bezrukovs

The results of modelling wind-related deformations in an RT-16 radio telescope (located at Irbene, Latvia) mirror system are presented. The Finite Volume method is used for the development of a Computational Fluid Dynamic model of turbulent airflow around the telescope. An open sourced Computational Fluid Dynamic toolkit OpenFOAM is used for the solution of Partial Different Equations. Notable model difficulties arise due to the open nature of the air flow leading to unknown far field turbulence parameters. Our future plans are to create a unified, coupled, liquid-solid interaction model for RT-32/RT-16 antennas.

Keywords
Computational Fluid Dynamic, k-epsilon turbulence model, radio telescope RT-16, wind load

Upnere, S., Jēkabsons, N., Joffe, R., Bezrukovs, V., Bezrukovs, V. Analysis of Wind Influence to Radio Astronomy Observations at Irbene Radio-telescope Complex. Environmental and Climate Technologies. Vol.6, 2011, pp.118-126. ISSN 1691-5208.

Publication language
English (en)