RANS simulation of a wind turbine wake in the neutral atmospheric pressure-driven boundary layer

Abstract

Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations of a single wind turbine wake in the neutral atmospheric pressure-driven boundary layer (PDBL) are conducted and compared to RANS simulations with inflow based on the more traditional log-law. The latter is valid in the neutral atmospheric surface layer (ASL), while the PDBL is a better representation of the whole atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). It is found that the wake results of the two types of simulations become more similar for increasing ABL height to rotor diameter ratio. In fact, the ASL is shown to be a special asymptotic case of the PDBL. The RANS simulations are also compared to a large-eddy simulation (LES) PDBL case, where it is found that both the ASL and PDBL RANS simulations compare well with the reference LES data in the wake region, while the RANS PDBL compares better with the data in the upper region of the domain.