Abstract
Abstract. In the present paper, numerical and experimental investigations of a model wind turbine with a diameter of 3.0 m are described. The study has three objectives. The first one is the provision of validation data. The second one is to estimate the influence of the wind tunnel walls by comparing measurements to simulated results with and without wind tunnel walls. The last objective is the comparison and evaluation of methods of high fidelity, namely computational fluid dynamics, and medium fidelity, namely lifting-line free vortex wake. The experiments were carried out in the large wind tunnel of the TU Berlin where a blockage ratio of 40 % occurs. With the lifting-line free vortex wake code QBlade, the turbine was simulated under far field conditions at the TU Berlin. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations of the wind turbine, including wind tunnel walls and under far field conditions, were performed at the University of Stuttgart with the computational fluid dynamics code FLOWer. Comparisons among the experiment, the lifting-line free vortex wake code and the computational fluid dynamics code include on-blade velocity and angle of attack. Comparisons of flow fields are drawn between the experiment and the computational fluid dynamics code. Bending moments are compared among the simulations. A good accordance was achieved for the on-blade velocity and the angle of attack, whereas deviations occur for the flow fields and the bending moments.
Highlights
In order to improve wind turbines, new strategies and concepts have been developed over the last couple of years
With the lifting-line free vortex wake code QBlade, the turbine was simulated under far field conditions at the TU Berlin
The lifting-line free vortex wake (LLFVW) computations in this study are performed with the wind turbine design and simulation tool QBlade (Marten et al, 2010, 2016, 2015), which is developed at the Technical University of Berlin
Summary
In order to improve wind turbines, new strategies and concepts have been developed over the last couple of years. Bastankhah and Porté-Agel (2015), for example, investigated the interaction among the wakes of turbines under yawed conditions. They used particle image velocimetry (PIV) for flow physics studies on this complex interaction phenomenon. Medici and Alfredsson (2006) examined the wake of a model wind turbine under uniform inflow and under the influence of freestream turbulence in terms of 3-D effects. For these investigations, as well as for the investigations of a model wind. In the far field case, where the wind tunnel walls are not modeled and the background grid has a large expansion, the setup features 38.0 million cells. The meshes for all other components, except the far field mesh, are created manually
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