Coherent vorticity dynamics and dissipation in a utility-scale wind turbine wake with uniform inflow

The vorticity dynamics and its relationship to dissipation in the wake of a utility-scale wind turbine are investigated through large-eddy simulation.The vorticity dynamics is assessed through the enstrophy,which is related to the turbulent dissipation.The averaged enstrophy and turbulent dissipation are shown to be quantitatively similar in the wake.Using temporal phase averaging,the vorticity fluctuations are decomposed into coherent and random fluctuations with respect to the frequency of the tip vortices.The enstrophy in the tip vortices is dominated by coherent fluctuations,while the coherent fluctuations of root vortices are immediately saturated by the random vorticity fluctuations of the unstable hub vortex.The coherent strain rate has significant differences com pared to the coherent enstrophy within one diameter downwind of blade tip,but the random enstrophy and strain rate are relatively similar.Differences in coherent enstrophy and strain rate decrease further from the rotor.

Fluid-structure interaction simulation of dynamic response and wake of floating offshore wind turbine considering tower shadow effect

The comprehensive numerical simulation of the tower shadow effect on floating offshore wind turbines(FOWTs),an area less explored compared to fixed-bottom wind turbines,is presented in this study.The atmospheric boundary layer inflow and the joint north sea wave project random wave are used as the operating conditions for FOWT.The combination of computational fluid dynamics(CFD)software simulator for wind farm applications and turbine simulation tool OpenFAST is used to implement fluid-structure interaction calculations.The output power,platform motion,wake velocity deficit and vortex structures are analyzed to reveal the influence of the tower shadow effect on the FOWT.The results indicate that due to the fluctuation caused by the turbulent wind and the floating platform motion,the tower shadow effect of FOWT is less significant for its periodic power decay than that of fixed-bottom wind turbines.And according to the velocity deficit analysis,the influence area of the tower shadow effect on the wake is mainly in the near wake region.

Assessment of scale interactions associated with wake meandering using bispectral analysis methodologies

Large atmospheric boundary layer fluctuations and smaller turbine-scale vorticity dynamics are separately hypothesized to initiate the wind turbine wake meandering phenomenon,a coherent,dynamic,turbine-scale oscillation of the far wake.Triadic interactions,the mechanism of energy transfers between scales,manifest as triples of wavenumbers or frequencies and can be characterized through bispectral analyses.The bispectrum,which correlates the two frequencies to their sum,is calculated by two recently developed multi-dimensional modal decomposition methods:scale-specific energy transfer method and bispectral mode decomposition.Large-eddy simulation of a utility-scale wind turbine in an atmospheric boundary layer with a broad range of large length-scales is used to acquire instantaneous velocity snapshots.The bispectrum from both methods identifies prominent upwind and wake meandering interactions that create a broad range of energy scales including the wake meandering scale.The coherent kinetic energy associated with the interactions shows strong correlation between upwind scales and wake meandering.

How far the wake of a wind farm can persist for?

With the increased penetration of wind energy in our nation’s energy portfolio, wind farms are placed in a way close to each other. Thus, their wakes have to be fully considered in the design and operation of a wind farm. In this study, we investigate the wake of a wind farm using large-eddy simulation with wind turbine rotor modelled by the actuator disk model. The simulated results show that the wake of a wind farm can persist for a long distance in its downstream. For the considered wind farm layout, the velocity in the wake recovers 95% of that of the undisturbed inflow at 55 rotor diameters downstream from its last row, suggesting that the wake of a wind farm should be fully considered in the optimal design and operation for its downstream wind farms.

An experimental study on the effects of relative rotation direction on the wake interferences among tandem wind turbines

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effects of relative rotation direction on the wake interferences among two tandemwind turbines models.While the oncoming flow conditions were kept in constant during the experiments,turbine power outputs,wind loads acting on the turbines,and wake characteristics behind the turbines were compared quantitatively with turbine models in either co-rotating or counter-rotating configuration.The measurement results reveal that the turbines in counter-rotating would harvest more wind energy from the same oncoming wind,compared with the co-rotating case.While the recovery of the streamwise velocity deficits in the wake flows was found to be almost identical with the turbines operated in either co-rotating or counter-rotating,the significant azimuthal velocity generated in the wake flow behind the upstream turbine is believed to be the reason why the counter-rotating turbines would have a better power production performance.Since the azimuthal flow velocity in the wake flow was found to decrease monotonically with the increasing downstream distance,the benefits of the counter-rotating configuration were found to decrease gradually as the spacing between the tandem turbines increases.While the counter-rotating downstream turbine was found to produce up to 20%more power compared with that of co-rotating configuration with the turbine spacing being about 0.7D,the advantage was found to become almost negligible when the turbine spacing becomes greater than 6.5D.It suggests that the counter-rotating configuration design would be more beneficial to turbines in onshore wind farms due to the smaller turbine spacing(i.e.,~3 rotor diameters for onshore wind farms vs.~7 rotor diameters for offshore wind farms in the prevailing wind direction),especially for those turbines sited over complex terrains with the turbine spacing only about 1–2 rotor diameters.