scholarly journals How does turbulence change approaching a rotor?

Author(s):  
Jakob Mann ◽  
Alfredo Peña ◽  
Niels Troldborg ◽  
Søren J. Andersen

Abstract. For load calculations on wind turbines it is usually assumed that the turbulence approaching the rotor does not change its statistics as it goes through the induction zone. We investigate this assumption using a nacelle-mounted forward-looking pulsed lidar that measures low frequency wind fluctuations simultaneous at distances between one half and three rotor diameters upstream. The measurements show that below rated wind speed the low-frequency wind variance is reduced by up to 10 % at one half rotor diameter upstream and above rated enhanced by up to 20 %. A quasi-steady model that takes into account the change of thrust coefficient with wind speed explains these variations partly. Large-eddy simulations of turbulence approaching an actuator disk model of a rotor support the finding that the slope of the thrust curve influences the low-frequency fluctuations.

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Mann ◽  
Alfredo Peña ◽  
Niels Troldborg ◽  
Søren J. Andersen

Abstract. For load calculations on wind turbines it is usually assumed that the turbulence approaching the rotor does not change its statistics as it goes through the induction zone. We investigate this assumption using a nacelle-mounted forward-looking pulsed lidar that measures low-frequency wind fluctuations simultaneously at distances between 0.5 and 3 rotor diameters upstream. The measurements show that below rated wind speed the low-frequency wind variance is reduced by up to 10 % at 0.5 rotor diameters upstream and above rated enhanced by up to 20 %. A quasi-steady model that takes into account the change in thrust coefficient with wind speed explains these variations partly. Large eddy simulations of turbulence approaching an actuator disk model of a rotor support the finding that the slope of the thrust curve influences the low-frequency fluctuations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 043143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey D. Mirocha ◽  
Daniel A. Rajewski ◽  
Nikola Marjanovic ◽  
Julie K. Lundquist ◽  
Branko Kosović ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah M. Johlas ◽  
David P. Schmidt ◽  
Matthew A. Lackner

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. Pedersen ◽  
M. Kelly ◽  
S.-E. Gryning ◽  
R. Floors ◽  
E. Batchvarova ◽  
...  

Abstract. Vertical profiles of the horizontal wind speed and of the standard deviation of vertical wind speed from Large Eddy Simulations of a convective atmospheric boundary layer are compared to wind LIDAR measurements up to 1400 m. Fair agreement regarding both types of profiles is observed only when the simulated flow is driven by a both time- and height-dependent geostrophic wind and a time-dependent surface heat flux. This underlines the importance of mesoscale effects when the flow above the atmospheric surface layer is simulated with a computational fluid dynamics model.


2005 ◽  
Vol 127 (5) ◽  
pp. 486-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayank Tyagi ◽  
Sumanta Acharya

Large eddy simulations are performed in a periodic domain of a rotating square duct with normal rib turbulators. Both the Coriolis force as well as the centrifugal buoyancy forces are included in this study. A direct approach is presented for the unsteady calculation of the nondimensional temperature field in the periodic domain. The calculations are performed at a Reynolds number (Re) of 12,500, a rotation number (Ro) of 0.12, and an inlet coolant-to-wall density ratio Δρ/ρ of 0.13. The predicted time and space-averaged Nusselt numbers are shown to compare satisfactorily with the published experimental data. Time sequences of the vorticity components and the temperature fields are presented to understand the flow physics and the unsteady heat transfer behavior. Large scale coherent structures are seen to play an important role in the mixing and heat transfer. The temperature field appears to contain a low frequency mode that extends beyond a single inter-rib geometric module, and indicates the necessity of using at least two inter-rib modules for streamwise periodicity to be satisfied. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of the flowfield indicates a low dimensionality of this system with almost 99% of turbulent energy in the first 80 POD modes.


Author(s):  
Mayank Tyagi ◽  
Sumanta Acharya

Large eddy simulations are performed in a periodic domain of a rotating square duct with normal rib turbulators. Both the Coriolis force as well as the centrifugal buoyancy force are included in this study. A direct approach is presented for the unsteady calculation of the non-dimensional temperature field in the periodic domain. The calculations are performed at a Reynolds number (Re) of 12, 500, a Rotation number (Ro) of 0.12 and an inlet coolant-to-wall density ratio (Δρ/ρ) of 0.13. The time-averaged Nusselt numbers compare satisfactorily with the data of Wagner et al. (J. Turbomachinery, Vol. 114, pp. 847–857). Time-sequences of the vorticity components and the temperature fields are presented to understand the flow physics and the unsteady heat transfer processes. Large scale coherent structures are seen to play an important role in the mixing and heat transfer. The temperature field appears to contain a low frequency mode that extends beyond a single inter-rib geometric module, and indicates the necessity of using at least two inter-rib modules for streamwise periodicity to be satisfied. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of 200 snapshots indicates a low dimensionality of this system with almost 99% of turbulent energy in the first 80 POD modes.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis A. Martínez-Tossas ◽  
Jennifer Annoni ◽  
Paul A. Fleming ◽  
Matthew J. Churchfield

Abstract. When a wind turbine is yawed, the shape of the wake changes and a curled wake profile is generated. The curled wake has drawn a lot of interest because of its aerodynamic complexity and applicability to wind farm controls. The main mechanism for the creation of the curled wake has been identified in the literature as a collection of vortices that are shed from the rotor plane when the turbine is yawed. This work extends that idea by using aerodynamic concepts to develop a control-oriented model for the curled wake based on approximations to the Navier-Stokes equations. The model is tested and compared to large-eddy simulations using actuator disk and line models. The model is able to capture the curling mechanism for a turbine under uniform inflow and in the case of a neutral atmospheric boundary layer. The model is then tested inside the FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State framework and provides excellent agreement with power predictions for cases with two and three turbines in a row.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Peña ◽  
Jeffrey Mirocha

<p>Mesoscale models, such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, are now commonly used to predict wind resources, and in recent years their outputs are being used as inputs to wake models for the prediction of the production of wind farms. Also, wind farm parametrizations have been implemented in the mesoscale models but their accuracy to reproduce wind speeds and turbulent kinetic energy fields within and around wind farms is yet unknown. This is partly because they have been evaluated against wind farm power measurements directly and, generally, a lack of high-quality observations of the wind field around large wind farms. Here, we evaluate the in-built wind farm parametrization of the WRF model, the so-called Fitch scheme that works together with the MYNN2 planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme against large-eddy simulations (LES) of wakes using a generalized actuator disk model, which was also implemented within the same WRF version. After setting both types of simulations as similar as possible so that the inflow conditions are nearly identical, preliminary results show that the velocity deficits can differ up to 50% within the same area (determined by the resolution of the mesoscale run) where the turbine is placed. In contrast, within that same area, the turbine-generated TKE is nearly identical in both simulations. We also prepare an analysis of the sensitivity of the results to the inflow wind conditions, horizontal grid resolution of both the LES and the PBL run, number of turbines within the mesoscale grid cells, surface roughness, inversion strength, and boundary-layer height.</p>


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