Large Eddy Simulations for Offshore Wind Farms Based on the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Abstract

This study developed a large-eddy simulation code for offshore wind farms based on the lattice Boltzmann method. We present simulation results for a mesh convergence study for a single wind turbine performance and turbine wake and simulation results for a portion of the wind farm (8 wind turbines) under different inflow turbulence conditions. For Vestas V80 wind turbine with a rotor diameter of 80 m, the actuator line model shows the mesh convergence on a 2 m grid. The mesh dependence was significant for the uniform inflow condition for the wind turbine wake. In contrast, the resolution dependence on the mean velocity was significantly smaller for the turbulence inflow winds. The wind farm calculations captured trends in the observed wind turbine performance. Still, the following wind turbine performances were smaller than the observation data, suggesting the need to introduce rotational speed and pitch control into the simulations.