Abstract
In large wind farms, the turbulence induced by each turbine results in high overall turbulence levels that can be detrimental for downstream wind turbine components. In the current study, we scrutinize structural loads and dynamics, and their correlation to turbulent flow structures by conducting aeroelastic simulations in wind farms. To this end, a pseudospectral large-eddy simulation solver is coupled with a multibody dynamics module in a multiscale framework. The multirate approach leads us naturally to the development of an aeroelastic actuator sector model that represents the wind turbine forces on the flow. This makes it computationally feasible to simulate long time horizons of the two-way coupled aeroelastic system. Hence, it allows us to look at the interaction of the turbine structure with the turbulent boundary layer and the wakes of multiple turbine arrays, and to get estimates of damage equivalent loads and structural loading statistics, as longer time series are available. Results are shown for two typical wind farm layouts, i.e. aligned and staggered, for above-rated flow regimes.
Highlights
Optimal layout and/or coordinated control of power maximization and loads alleviation of large wind farms can significantly cut down the overall cost of wind energy [1,2,3,4]
We rely on large-eddy simulations (LES) coupled with flexible multibody simulations (MBS), offering us a well-balanced trade-off between computational time and finescale resolution
The effective distance between two rows is double in the staggered wind farm and the wake is almost depleted when it reaches the row, higher velocities exist in this configuration
Summary
Optimal layout and/or coordinated control of power maximization and loads alleviation of large wind farms can significantly cut down the overall cost of wind energy [1,2,3,4]. The design and control engineers could be facilitated by gaining adequate insight into the complex dynamic interactions that take place among the clustered turbines This necessitates the use of highfidelity multiphysics tools that can represent authentic flow patterns and accurate structural response. Substantial research has focused on the parametrization of the wind turbines in LES, namely the most widespread approaches are the actuator disk (ADM) [5,6,7,8,9] and line method (ALM) [10,11,12,13,14] Those wind turbine models are preferred since it is still computationally prohibitive to conduct large-eddy simulations of extensive wind farms with fully-resolved turbine geometry. Other variants have been introduced such as the actuator surface [15] and sector model [16] attaining improved accuracy or lower computational cost
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