Abstract
The second part of this work describes a wind turbine Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation capable of modeling wake effects. The work is intended to establish a computational framework from which to investigate wind farm layout. Following the first part of this work that described the near wake flow field, the physical domain of the validated model in the near wake was adapted and extended to include the far wake. Additionally, the numerical approach implemented allowed to efficiently model the effects of the wake interaction between rows in a wind farm with reduced computational costs. The influence of some wind farm design parameters on the wake development was assessed: Tip Speed Ratio (TSR), free-stream velocity, and pitch angle. The results showed that the velocity and turbulence intensity profiles in the far wake are dependent on the TSR. The wake profile did not present significant sensitivity to the pitch angle for values kept close to the designed condition. The capability of the proposed CFD model showed to be consistent when compared with field data and kinematical models results, presenting similar ranges of wake deficit. In conclusion, the computational models proposed in this work can be used to improve wind farm layout considering wake effects.
Highlights
The necessity for improving wake models has become more apparent over the last decade with the continuous growth of the wind energy market
It is impossible to compare compare the thefar farwake wakedata data from simulations performed in this work against experimental to from thethe simulations performed in this work against experimental data data from the MEXICO rotor, the results of the velocity in the far wake can be verified by comparing other relevant works in the literature
A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model based on the Moving (or non-inertial) Reference Frame (MRF) approach was developed to assess wind turbine far wake characteristics according to operating conditions typically experienced in commercial wind farms
Summary
The necessity for improving wake models has become more apparent over the last decade with the continuous growth of the wind energy market. Literature shows several analytical wake models: Infinite wind farm boundary layer model, Jensen wake model, Larsen model, dynamic wake meandering model, FUGA (Linearized RANS Model), and EllipSys3D. All these models are excellent tools to estimate wake effects, but there is still room for improvement. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models have the capability to model wake velocity deficit and Turbulence Intensity (TI) according to variable operating conditions. This study proposes a CFD modeling technique to characterize three-dimensional far wake effects, and numerically quantify the influence of some important wind farm design parameters on the far wake aerodynamic behavior. The literature shows that there is a gap in attempting to solve the Wind
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