scholarly journals A CFD Study for Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Aerodynamics in Turbulent Wind Field

Author(s):  
Yang Zhou ◽  
Qing Xiao ◽  
Yuanchuan Liu ◽  
Atilla Incecik ◽  
Christophe Peyrard ◽  
...  

Abstract The present study is aimed at investigating the turbulent wind effect on FOWT through the usage of a high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. This method is believed to resolve the wind field, giving us a more in-depth examination into the aerodynamics of FOWT. The work is built upon our previous studies on the modelling of a coupled aero-hydro-mooring FOWT system under regular wave and uniform wind. In the present study, we replaced the previously uniform wind with a temporal and spatial variable turbulent wind field using a time-varying spectrum. The turbulent wind is generated with Mann’s wind turbulence model while the Von Karman wind spectrum is used to represent wind turbulence. The present study shows that when turbulent wind is present, there may be fluctuations of the rotor thrust and power outputs, causing the non-uniform wake region. Despite this, both the dynamic motions and the mooring tensions of the floater are not significantly influenced by the wind turbulence under the present inflow wind conditions.

Author(s):  
E. Kim ◽  
L. Manuel

We present a framework aimed at estimating the potential damage to an offshore wind farm from hurricanes. Our approach is related to assessing risks that are assumed to be fundamentally related to the estimation of wind speed exceedance probabilities at selected hub heights of wind turbines in the farm and of associated wind turbine loads. As part of this preliminary framework for risk assessment, synthetic storm tracks are first simulated over the ocean using available historical tropical storm data; then, a hurricane intensity evolution model based on thermodynamic and atmospheric environmental variables is developed for each of the tracks as they get to regions within the proximity of the chosen wind farm site. Based on this intensity model, a turbulent wind field can be simulated at locations of interest along the hurricane track. The simulated turbulent wind field may then be used to estimate wind speed exceedance probability distributions and, when combined with correlated waves, it can also be used in analysis of the response of individual turbines in a wind farm. The framework for the overall risk assessment is presented; the individual components that comprise such an assessment are described briefly in illustrative applications.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Auguste Gires ◽  
Ioulia Tchiguirinskaia ◽  
Daniel Schertzer

<p>It is commonly assumed that a rain drop falls vertically at a speed equal to its so called “terminal fall velocity” which has been determined both empirically and theoretically by equating the net gravity force with the drag force due to the fact the drop is moving in the atmosphere. This velocity depends on the size of the drop, usually characterized by its equivolumic diameter.</p><p>In this investigation we study the temporal evolution of the velocity of a rain drop falling through turbulent wind field. The equation governing a rain drop motion relates the acceleration to the forces of gravity and buoyancy along with the drag force. The latter depends non-linearly on the instantaneous relative velocity between the drop and the local wind. The whole complexity of the resulting behaviour arises from this feature. In this work, the drag force is expressed in a standard way with the help of a drag coefficient, which is itself determined according to a Reynolds number. It should be mentioned that in this initial work, the strong assumption that the drops remain spherical in their fall is made. It is well known that its not true for drops greater than typically 1-2 mm which tend to become oblate, and potential effects on the results will be discussed.</p><p>An explicit numerical scheme is implemented to solve this equation for 3+1D turbulent wind field to study the temporal evolution of the velocities as well as the trajectories of rain drops over few hundreds of meters. The variations in both space and time of the wind field are simulated with the help of a Universal Multifractals which are a framework that has been widely used to characterize and simulate geophysical fields extremely variable over a wide range of scales such as wind.</p><p>Temporal multifractal analysis are then carried out on the simulated drop velocity, which enables to characterize the behaviour of drops according to their size, and notably a scale below which turbulent eddies have a limited impact on their motion. Finally the consequences of these findings on rainfall remote sensing with radars are briefly discussed.</p>


Author(s):  
Xiaolu Chen ◽  
Zhiyu Jiang ◽  
Qinyuan Li ◽  
Ye Li

Abstract Evaluation of dynamic responses under extreme environmental conditions is important for the structural design of offshore wind turbines. Previously, a modified environmental contour method has been proposed to estimate extreme responses. In the method, the joint distribution of environmental variables near the cut-out wind speed is used to derive the critical environmental conditions for a specified return period, and the turbulence intensity (TI) of wind is assumed to be a deterministic value. To address more realistic wind conditions, this paper considers the turbulence intensity as a stochastic variable and investigates the impact on the modified environmental contour. Aerodynamic simulations are run over a range of mean wind speeds at the hub height from 9–25 m/s and turbulence levels between 9%–15%. Dynamic responses of a monopile offshore wind turbine under extreme conditions were studied, and the importance of considering the uncertainties associated with wind turbulence is highlighted. A case of evaluating the extreme response for 50-year environmental contour is given as an example of including TI as an extra variant in environmental contour method. The result is compared with traditional method in which TI is set as a constant of 15%. It shows that taking TI into consideration based on probabilistic method produces a lower extreme response prediction.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (24) ◽  
pp. 5506
Author(s):  
Zidong Xu ◽  
Hao Wang ◽  
Han Zhang ◽  
Kaiyong Zhao ◽  
Hui Gao ◽  
...  

Numerical simulation of the turbulent wind field on long-span bridges is an important task in structural buffeting analysis when it comes to the system non-linearity. As for non-stationary extreme wind events, some efforts have been paid to update the classic spectral representation method (SRM) and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) has been introduced to improve the computational efficiency. Here, the non-negative matrix factorization-based FFT-aided SRM has been updated to generate not only the horizontal non-stationary turbulent wind field, but also the vertical one. Specifically, the evolutionary power spectral density (EPSD) is estimated to characterize the non-stationary feature of the field-measured wind data during Typhoon Wipha at the Runyang Suspension Bridge (RSB) site. The coherence function considering the phase angles is utilized to generate the turbulent wind fields for towers. The simulation accuracy is validated by comparing the simulated and target auto-/cross-correlation functions. Results show that the updated method performs well in generating the non-stationary turbulent wind field. The obtained wind fields will provide the research basis for analyzing the non-stationary buffeting behavior of the RSB and other wind-sensitive structures in adjacent regions.


Author(s):  
Teng Wang ◽  
Hui Jin ◽  
Xiaoni Wu

The dynamic response of a tension leg platform (TLP) floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) was analyzed with considering the aero-hydro characteristic of the whole floating wind turbine system including the wind turbine, TLP platform, and tethers. The “aero-hydro” coupled dynamic analysis was conducted in ansys-aqwa with a dynamic link library (DLL) calculating the aerodynamics loading at every steptime based on the blade element momentum theory. Results from the coupled dynamic analysis of TLP FOWT under the condition of turbulent wind and regular wave show that the wind loads influence mainly the low-frequency response of the TLP FOWT. The wind loads have a large impact on the offsets of the TLP away from the initial position while the wave loads influence mainly the fluctuation amplitude of the TLP FOWT. The average TLP pitch response under the wind load is significantly larger due to the large wind-induced heeling moment on the wind turbine. In addition, the tension of tethers at the upwind end is greater than that at the downwind end. The wind loads could reduce effectively the average tension of the tethers, and the tension of tethers is significantly affected by the pitch motion. Results from the coupled dynamic analysis of TLP FOWT under the condition of turbulent wind and irregular wave show that the surge and pitch of TLP result in an obvious increase of thrust of the turbine and the amplitude of torque fluctuation, more attention should be paid to the pitch and surge motion of TLP FOWT.


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