A novel wake control strategy for a twin-rotor floating wind turbine: Mitigating wake effect

Abstract

As one of the most promising alternatives to large wind turbines, twin-rotor floating wind turbines enables a significant reduction in the cost of power generation. An appropriate wake control strategy for twin-rotor floating wind turbines can contribute to the reduction of wake effect in wind farms. In the current study, aerodynamics and wake characteristics of twin-rotor floating wind turbine under four different yaw configurations are demonstrated. In detail, the variation of power and thrust of the twin-rotor at different yaw angles (0°, 5°, 10°, 15°, 20°, 30°) are analyzed, and the effect of the surge motion amplitude on the torque and thrust of twin-rotor in yaw are considered, and the wake dynamics under four different configurations are compared. The power gain of a twin-rotor floating wind turbine is about 5 % compared to a DTU 10 MW wind turbine at yaw angle of 15°. When the twin-rotor wind turbine is in wake channeling configuration, optimum wake recovery performance with the lowest level of turbulent kinetic energy is achieved. This study provides a scenario for optimizing the framework of floating wind farms.