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Similarity of wake meandering for different wind turbine designs for different scales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2018

Daniel Foti ,
Xiaolei Yang  and
Fotis Sotiropoulos Open the ORCID record for Fotis Sotiropoulos [Opens in a new window]
Daniel Foti
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Xiaolei Yang
Affiliation:
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
Fotis Sotiropoulos*
Affiliation:
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: fotis.sotiropoulos@stonybrook.edu
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Abstract

The wake meandering characteristics of four different wind turbine designs with diameters ranging from a few centimetres (wind tunnel scale) to a hundred metres (utility scale) are investigated using large-eddy simulation with the turbine blades and nacelle parametrised using a new actuator surface model. Different velocity fields and meandering behaviours are observed at near-wake locations. At far-wake locations, on the other hand, the mean velocity deficit profiles begin to collapse when scaled by the centreline velocity deficit based on the incoming wind speed at turbine hub height, suggesting far-wake similarity across scales. The turbine-added turbulence kinetic energy profiles are shown to also nearly collapse with each other in the far wake when normalised using a velocity scale defined by the thrust on the turbine rotor. Moreover, we show that at far-wake locations, the simulated flow fields for all four turbine designs exhibit similar wake meandering characteristics in terms of (1) a Strouhal number independent of rotor designs of different sizes and (2) the distributions of wake meandering wavelengths and amplitudes when normalised by the rotor diameter and a length scale defined by the turbine thrust respectively.

JFM classification

Aerodynamics: Aerodynamics Wakes/Jets: Wakes
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 842 , 10 May 2018 , pp. 5 - 25
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Copyright
© 2018 Cambridge University Press 

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