Turbulent large-scale structure effects on wake meandering

Abstract

This work studies effects of large-scale turbulent structures on wake meandering using Large Eddy Simulations (LES) over an actuator disk. Other potential source of wake meandering such as the instablility mechanisms associated with tip vortices are not treated in this study. A crucial element of the efficient, pragmatic and successful simulations of large-scale turbulent structures in Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) is the generation of the stochastic turbulent atmospheric flow. This is an essential capability since one source of wake meandering is these large - larger than the turbine diameter - turbulent structures. The unsteady wind turbine wake in ABL is simulated using a combination of LES and actuator disk approaches. In order to dedicate the large majority of the available computing power in the wake, the ABL ground region of the flow is not part of the computational domain. Instead, mixed Dirichlet/Neumann boundary conditions are applied at all the computational surfaces except at the outlet. Prescribed values for Dirichlet contribution of these boundary conditions are provided by a stochastic turbulent wind generator. This allows to simulate large-scale turbulent structures - larger than the computational domain - leading to an efficient simulation technique of wake meandering. Since the stochastic wind generator includes shear, the turbulence production is included in the analysis without the necessity of resolving the flow near the ground. The classical Smagorinsky sub-grid model is used.The resulting numerical methodology has been implemented in OpenFOAM. Comparisons with experimental measurements in porous-disk wakes have been undertaken, and the agreements are good. While temporal resolution in experimental measurements is high, the spatial resolution is often too low. LES numerical results provide a more complete spatial description of the flow. They tend to demonstrate that inflow low frequency content - or large- scale turbulent structures - is an important parameter when simulating wake meandering and plays a significant role.