Roughness Length Research Articles

Sensitivity of mesoscale modeling to urban morphological feature inputs and implications for characterizing urban sustainability

We examine the differences in meteorological output from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model run at 270 m horizontal resolution using 10 m, 100 m and 1 km resolution 3D neighborhood morphological inputs and with no morphological inputs. We find that the spatial variability in temperature, humidity, and other meteorological variables across the city can vary with the resolution and the coverage of the 3D urban morphological input, and that larger differences occur between simulations run without 3D morphological input and those run with some type of 3D morphology. We also find that the inclusion of input-building-defined roughness length calculations would improve simulation results further. We show that these inputs produce different patterns of heat wave spatial heterogeneity across the city of Washington, DC. These findings suggest that understanding neighborhood level urban sustainability under extreme heat waves, especially for vulnerable neighborhoods, requires attention to the representation of surface terrain in numerical weather models.

Approach for the vertical wind speed profile implemented in the UTCI basics blocks UTCI applications at the urban pedestrian level.

The applicability of the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) at the urban pedestrian level is analysed in relation to the approach for the vertical wind speed profile (VWSP) used in the UTCI basics. As the UTCI refers to the human-biometeorological reference height (zh-b) of 1.1m above ground level (agl), all meteorological input variables for UTCI calculations should also be originated from zh-b. Since the development of the UTCI considered meteorological conventions for stations routinely operated by national weather services, the wind speed (v) as one of four meteorological input variables is initially required at 10m agl (v10 m). In order to calculate v at zh-b from v10 m, the logarithmic law for the VWSP is implemented in the UTCI basics, but only for neutral atmospheric stability and a roughness length (z0) for short-cut grassland (z0 = 0.01m). This methodological approach cannot be changed in the UTCI basics so far. The UTCI developers also recommend the application of the same logarithmic law, if v values at lower heights have to be extrapolated to 10m agl. However, the use of this VWSP approach disregards basic air flow findings and principles in the urban canopy layer (UCL). If the UTCI is nevertheless applied at the urban pedestrian level, inaccuracies in the UTCI values will occur. With reference to z0 = 0.80m, which is more typical for the UCL, they can be up to 7K, as shown in the example of three different climate zones.

A LES-ALM Study for the Turbulence Characteristics of Wind Turbine Wake Under Different Roughness Lengths

To investigate the characteristics of wind turbine wakes under different aerodynamic roughness lengths, a series of LES-ALM simulations were carried out in this study. First, a sensitivity analysis of the time step of the simulation results was performed. Then, the study compared the power and thrust of wind turbines under different roughness conditions. Finally, the mean velocity deficit, added turbulence intensity, and Reynolds shear stresses in the wake were analyzed under different roughness conditions. This study finds that a 0.1 s time step can provide satisfactory results for the LES-ALM compared to a 0.02 s time step. Furthermore, for the same hub-height wind speed, the thrust coefficient varies from 0.75 to 0.8 under the different roughness levels. As the roughness length increases, the time-averaged velocity deficit and added turbulence intensity decreases, and the wake recovers more quickly at the incoming level. However, the effect of roughness length on the Reynolds shear stress is weak within the downstream range of x = 6D to 10D. For the velocity deficit, a single Gaussian function is not able to describe its vertical distribution. Additionally, under higher roughness conditions, the height of the wake center is distinctively higher than the hub height as the wake develops downstream. The findings of this paper are beneficial for selecting the approximate numerical parameters for the wake simulations and provide deeper insights into the turbulence mechanisms of wind turbine wake, which are crucial for establishing analytical models to predict the wake field.

Layer-by-layer growth, apparent instability, and mound coarsening in thin film deposition controlled by thermally activated surface diffusion

Thin film deposition from vapor with adsorbate diffusion and Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barriers at step edges is studied by kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations and scaling approaches. Mound coarsening with slope selection is shown at the largest thicknesses, where roughness (W) and correlation length (ξ) scale in time with exponents β≈n≈0.25, consistently with theoretical works but contrasting with previous simulations that systematically showed temperature-dependent exponents. At a given film thickness, we show that the mounded morphology is independent of the ES barrier, so that interlayer transport is suppressed, while the temperature increase of W and ξ is consistent with intralayer transport limited by adatom detachment from flat terrace borders. Initial layer-by-layer (LBL) growth occurs above a characteristic temperature that increases with the activation energies of terrace diffusion and of ES barrier, but weakly depends on the external flux. Subsequently, as the surface roughness is near the atom/molecule size, there is rapid roughening where, counterintuitively, larger effective growth exponents (β>0.5, suggesting unstable growth) are correlated with longer LBL regimes. Similar LBL-rough transitions were reported in organic film deposition and the model application to diindenoperylene films suggests a large ES barrier ∼0.4eV. In the mound coarsening regime, W/ξ and θ1/2/Wξ converge to constant values dependent on surface diffusion coefficients (θ is the film thickness). This convergence suggests mound coarsening with slope selection in SnTe films whose effective β is anomalously large, showing how film morphology can be interpreted beyond exponent measurements.

Predicting flow resistance in rough‐bed rivers from topographic roughness: Review and open questions

AbstractMost ways of predicting flow resistance in shallow rivers with a partial or complete cover of coarse sediment use a bed‐sediment grain diameter as a roughness length scale. However, beds with the same grain size distribution differ in roughness and flow resistance depending on how the larger grains are arranged, the nature of any bedforms and the possible complications of bedrock or rough banks. This has led to interest in predicting flow resistance using metrics of the topographic roughness of the bed. Some researchers have used the standard deviation of bed elevation as a roughness length scale. An alternative for channels containing boulders is to regard the bed as an array of large roughness elements. Fluvial research to date using these two approaches is limited and inconclusive. We review potentially relevant findings from the much more extensive literature in boundary‐layer meteorology and various branches of engineering and note links between the distribution‐statistics and element‐array approaches. The skewness of the elevation distribution is widely seen as important but it is unclear how best to use it for flow prediction. Other open questions include the scale dependence of topographic metrics, and what type of flow resistance equation to use them in. Calibration and testing of new prediction methods require flow data from reaches with known roughness statistics. This need should be met partly by measurements at field sites or in flume models of them, but also by flume experiments and numerical simulations using synthetic roughness.

Deducing Aerodynamic Roughness Length From Abundant Anemometer Tower Data to Inform Wind Resource Modeling

AbstractAerodynamic roughness length () fundamentally affects land surface momentum loss and wind resource simulation, but ground truth data of are sparse in space, causing datasets used in atmospheric models are empirically estimated from land cover types through a look‐up table. In this study, we derived values from 101 anemometer towers in China. Taking them as ground truth, we show that existing gridded datasets determined from either a look‐up table or a machine‐learning method contain considerable uncertainty and fail to capture the variability of within each land cover type, although the latter performs better. Even for the widely used ERA5, its is overestimated in wind‐rich regions of China, causing an underestimation of near‐surface wind speed. This highlights the necessity to improve data in atmospheric models. Current rapidly expanding anemometer towers may substantially enrich truth data and thus provide potential to improve wind resource modeling.

Characteristic Analysis of Vertical Tidal Profile Parameters at Tidal Current Energy Site

Many mathematical models have been proposed to estimate vertical tidal current profiles. However, as previous studies have shown that tidal current energy sites have different characteristics in their vertical tidal current profiles, it is necessary to estimate the profiles from field-measured data for practical purposes. In this study, we measured layered tidal currents over two months using an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) to analyze the characteristics of vertical tidal current profiles at the Jangjuk Strait, a candidate site for tidal current energy. As a result, the power law parameter α and bed roughness β were estimated as 4.51–12.41 and 0.38–0.42, respectively. Additionally, the maximum roughness length representing seabed roughness in the logarithmic profile was estimated as 0.221 m, and the estimated friction velocity was 0.038–0.194 m/s. Furthermore, a high correlation was observed between the depth-averaged tidal current velocity and friction velocities at all sites during flood and ebb tide conditions. A high correlation was also found between the bed roughness, roughness length, and power law exponent at relatively deeper sites. Tidal current energy sites display distinct characteristics compared to other sea areas. Therefore, it is essential to account for field conditions when conducting numerical modeling and design.

Simulation of the Neutral Atmospheric Flow Using Multiscale Modeling: Comparative Studies for SimpleFoam and Fluent Solver

The reproduced planetary boundary layer (PBL) wind is commonly applied in downscaled simulations using commercial CFD codes with Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) turbulence modeling. When using the turbulent inlets calculated by numerical weather prediction models (NWP), adjustments of the turbulence eddy viscosity closures and wall function formulations are concerned with maintaining the fully developed wind profiles specified at the inlet of CFD domains. The impact of these related configurations is worth discussing in engineering applications, especially when commercial codes restrict the internal modifications. This study evaluates the numerical performances of open-source OpenFOAM 2.3.0 and commercial Fluent 17.2 codes as supplementary scientific comparisons. This contribution focuses on the modified turbulence closures to incorporate turbulent profiles produced from mesoscale PBL parameterizations and the modified wall treatments relating to the roughness length. The near-ground flow features are evaluated by selecting the flat terrains and the classical Askervein benchmark case. The improvement in near-ground wind flow under the downscaled framework shows satisfactory performance in the open-source CFD platform. This contributes to engineers realizing the micro-siting of wind turbines and quantifying terrain-induced speed-up phenomena under the scope of wind-resistant design.

Simulating lake ice phenology using a coupled atmosphere–lake model at Nam Co, a typical deep alpine lake on the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract. Simulating the ice phenology of deep alpine lakes is important and challenging in coupled atmosphere–lake models. In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, coupled with two lake models, the freshwater lake (WRF–FLake) model and the default lake (WRF–CLake) model, was applied to Nam Co, a typical deep alpine lake located in the centre of the Tibetan Plateau, to simulate its lake ice phenology. Due to the large errors in simulating lake ice phenology, related key parameters and parameterizations were improved in the coupled model based on observations and physics-based schemes. By improving the momentum, hydraulic, and thermal roughness length parameterizations, both the WRF–FLake model and the WRF–CLake model reasonably simulated the lake freeze-up date. By improving the key parameters associated with shortwave radiation transfer processes when lake ice exists, both models generally simulated the lake break-up date well. Compared with WRF–CLake without improvements, the coupled model with both revised lake models significantly improved the simulation of lake ice phenology. However, there were still considerable errors in simulating the spatial patterns of freeze-up and break-up dates, implying that significant challenges in simulating the lake ice phenology still exist in representing some important model physics, including lake physics such as grid-scale water circulation and atmospheric processes such as snowfall and surface snow dynamics. Therefore, this work can provide valuable new implications for advancing lake ice phenology simulations in coupled models, and the improved model also has practical application prospects in weather and climate forecasts.

Changing windstorm characteristics over the US Northeast in a single model large ensemble

Abstract Extreme windstorms pose a significant hazard to infrastructure and public safety, particularly in the highly populated US Northeast (NE). However, the influence climate change and changing land use will have on these events remains unclear. A large ensemble generated using the Max-Planck Institute (MPI) Earth system model is used to generate projections of NE windstorms under different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and to attribute changes to projected land use land cover (LULC) change, externally forced changes and internal climate variability. To reduce the influence of coarse grid cell resolution and uncertainties in surface roughness lengths, windstorms are identified using simultaneous widespread exceedance of local 99th percentile 10 m wind speeds (U99). Projected declines in forest cover in the NE and the resulting reductions in surface roughness length under SSP3-7.0 lead to projections of large increases in U99 and derived windstorm intensity and scale. However, these projected changes in regional LULC under SSP3-7.0 are unprecedented in a historical context and may not be realistic. After corrections are applied to remove the influence of LULC on wind speeds, regionally averaged U99 exhibit declines for most of the single model initial-condition large ensemble (SMILE) members which are broadly proportional to the radiative forcing and global air temperature increase in the SSPs, with a median value of −0.15 ms−1 °C−1. While weak cyclones are projected to decline in frequency in the NE, intense cyclones and the resulting windstorms and indices of socioeconomic loss do not. Where present, significant trends in these loss indices are positive, and some MPI SMILE members generate future windstorms that are unprecedented in the historical period.

A framework for technico-environmental optimization of small wind turbines

Small Wind Turbines (SWTs) can provide energy access and participate to energy transition by enabling local electricity production at a low environmental cost. However, there is a lack of comprehensive approaches to address the challenge of reducing the electricity footprint of SWT systems. In this article, a technico-environmental framework is proposed to enable the optimization of the environmental footprint of the electricity provided by a SWT system. The compromise between energy harvest and environmental impacts is studied by establishing and coupling life-cycle and energy models taking into account the system configuration (grid-tied, off-grid), design parameters (tower height, battery sizing), the site characteristics (roughness length, wind resource), and the user behaviour aspects (load-shifting). For considered scenarios, the results indicate that the tower height that minimizes the footprint of the provided electricity is identical for grid-tied and off-grid systems. It is in the range of 12–24 m for roughness lengths (0.1–0.5 m) and heavily depends on roughness length and wind resource. Interestingly, increasing the load shifting from 20% to 80% could help reduce by a factor two the footprint of the provided electricity in grid-tied configuration. Following these results, some recommendations are proposed regarding the scaling of the tower and the load shifting. Some perspectives are also given to improve the technico-environmental framework. The data and the source codes used in this article are provided on a public repository.

Scaling analysis of electrodeposited copper and the influence of a modified polysaccharide on surface roughness

The influence of a commercially available modified polysaccharide (HydroStar®, Chemstar Chemical Products) on the roughness of short-term and small-scale copper electrodeposits was investigated using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), linear scan profilometry and scaling analysis. Copper was deposited on a 316L stainless steel cathode at 40 °C and 300 A m−2 from an electrolyte containing 40 g L−1 Cu2+, 170 g L−1 H2SO4, 1.5 g L−1 Fe3+, 15 mg L−1 Cl− and either 0, 10, 50 or 100 mg L−1 of HydroStar. Copper deposits produced between 15 and 25 min were imaged using AFM and 2D linear scan profilometry was used to gather surface features of copper samples produced in the range of 120 and 240 min. Scaling analysis was applied to quantify the surface characteristics of limiting roughness (δ) and critical length (LC) from which δ/LC was computed and related to the aspect ratio of surface features. All copper deposits showed a general rise in δ and LC with deposition time but the growth rates decreased when HydroStar was included in the electrolyte indicating that the additive lowers the vertical height of surface features as well as their widths. Furthermore, copper deposits were more consistently produced in the presence of HydroStar and, for a given value of limiting roughness, had surface features with wider base than those created in the absence of the additive. The results show that the modified polysaccharide acts to create smooth copper deposits by generating surface features with lower aspect ratios.

Comparative examinations of wind speed and energy extrapolation methods using remotely sensed data – A case study from Hungary

Exact knowledge of wind energy potential is a fundamental issue in wind energy utilization. The vertical changes in wind speeds, that is, the wind profile, have a predominant impact on the wind energy available at a location because the kinetic energy of moving air is proportional to the square of the wind speed. Roughness describes the resistance of a 3D surface to moving air. The exponent α of the power law of Hellmann and the roughness length (z0) are two parameters that describe the effects of the roughness of the surface on the wind profile. They can be used for the vertical extrapolation of wind speeds. The exponent α can be determined using multiple height level wind speed measurement data, whereas a reliable technique for the calculation of the roughness length requires detailed knowledge of the 3D geometry of the measurement site. In the present study, the exponent α was calculated based on SODAR wind speed measurements, while (z0) was determined using a combination of GIS and UAS-based aerial survey methods. Wind speeds measured at 50 m were extrapolated for height levels of 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120 m using dynamic power law exponent values. Wind power was determined using the power law (method V1), roughness length (method V2), frequency distribution (method W-RF), and gamma distribution (method W-G), and Windographer software was compared to the values calculated from the empirical (measured) wind speeds. A comparative statistical analysis of the datasets of the power law and roughness length methods on monthly/diurnal, annual/diurnal, and month/direction contexts showed no significant differences at all height levels. Differences can be detected in the distribution of the signs of the differences at heights of 80 and 120 m for the entire dataset. Underestimation was dominant with a significant frequency (over 70 %) in the case of both methods and heights. There were no significant differences between the wind power estimations provided by the different methods, and all the methods involved in the study underestimated the wind speeds and wind energy potential for each height level. Methods V1 and V2 can be used alternatively, depending on the input data available for analysis. The major advantage of method V2 is that it provides the same accuracy as V1, which requires a UAS-based aerial survey at the beginning, but continuous wind measurements must be performed at a lower height only. This means that there is no need for a high measurement tower, which makes the measurements simpler, more cost-effective, and causes much less disturbance to the environment. Another important advantage of the methods presented here is that they use a dynamic approach of power law exponent values that provide a more realistic estimation of wind speed and energy on a diurnal scale.

A numerical investigation to assess changes to displacement front and by-passed zones employing kinetic interface-sensitive tracer

An important aspect in groundwater remediation is to understand changes of multiphase fluid front morphology and stagnant regions on macro scale. However, the prediction of those changes during two-phase flow remains a challenging task due to the interplay of various physical factors. Recent laboratory experiments have demonstrated tracers' ability to predict deformation in the front of a two-phase flow system by utilizing a new reactive tracer known as, the kinetic interface sensitive tracer (KIS). This research employs a reactive transport model coupled with a macro-scale two-phase flow model to numerically analyse how viscosity ratio, capillary number, and heterogeneities on the tracer's signal and its impact the frontal deformation. One homogeneous and two heterogeneous types of porous media are considered. The background porous medium is a fine-grained, low-permeability medium, with a coarser, high-permeability lenses, generating heterogeneous material properties. The high-permeability lenses account for 25 % of the total model area and are arranged in either periodic or random patterns. The findings are evaluated using four parameters (effective front length, swept area, front roughness, and transition zone length). The flow patterns dominating the shape of the front are characterized by the viscous and capillary forces i.e. capillary number and the viscosity ratio between the two fluids. The results show that changes in flow regimes can be quantified using effective front length, thus employing the effective front length the viscous fingering regions can be quantified. Furthermore, front roughness and transition zone length are extracted and their relevance to the by-passed zones is presented. The slope of the reactive KIS tracer breakthrough curve, plotted on a phase diagram, can also be used to predict the existence of the by-passed zones for a low viscosity ratio. Finally, changes in front roughness and transition zone length induced by the inclusions are correlated to the slope of the KIS tracer BTC. The findings of this study can contribute to a better understanding of the impact of different flow regimes on the KIS tracer breakthrough signals and the linkages between the tracer signals and the front sizes.

Parameterization of Wave‐Induced Stress in Large‐Eddy Simulations of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer

AbstractLarge‐eddy simulations (LES) of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL) commonly utilize roughness length to parameterize wave effects on the sea surface. However, this method might not adequately capture the intricacies of wind‐wave interactions, especially in swell‐dominated conditions. In this study, we integrated a wave‐induced stress parameterization method into the open‐source LES code, PArallel Large‐eddy simulation Model (PALM), and assessed its performance under low wind conditions with varying wave ages and directions. Our method treats windsea effects as surface friction while employing an exponentially decaying profile to represent swell‐induced stress. We examined the model's sensitivity to wind and wave parameters and calibrated the wave damping rate values across various scenarios, leveraging data from wave‐phase‐resolved simulations and field measurements. The enhanced LES model with the proposed wave parameterization effectively reproduces wave‐influenced wind characteristics such as upward momentum flux, low‐level wind maximum, and negative wind gradients, showing good agreement with previous numerical and observational data. Moreover, our model accounts for wind‐wave misalignment scenarios by calculating each directional and spectral wave stress component individually and integrating them over the wave spectrum. We found that the swell‐induced stress is the dominant force in the wave boundary layer (WBL) with low wind speed, with its magnitude significantly varying with the wave direction relative to the wind. This variation influences the dynamic equilibrium within the WBL, modifying both wind shear and wind veer, and these effects persist up to the top of the boundary layer flow.

Variations in gust factor with wind direction and height based on the measurements from a coastal tower during three landfalling typhoons

Using high-frequency onshore wind data from four different heights of a coastal tower, the variations in gust factor with turbulence intensity, height and wind speed were studied under typhoon conditions. The gust factor increases with increasing turbulence intensity and, most often, can be described by a linear relationship with the turbulence intensity. The gust factor decreases with height and is relatively small compared with those presented in the national codes and other studies. A value of 2.5 is acceptable for the peak factor, which is close to the recommended value of the national code in China. The gust factor increases with increasing wind speed and is also affected by the wind direction. The gust factor has a value to that of previously published results when the wind flows roughly perpendicular to the shoreline, and has a smaller value when the wind flows roughly parallel to the shoreline. The phenomenon is caused by the confinement of shoreline on the sea wave development. Sea waves tend to propagate normal to the shoreline because of the refraction effect. As a result, a shorter roughness length exists in the parallel direction to the shoreline. It can be further explained by the weakness in the momentum flux exchange between the air and sea based on the wave form drag theory when the wind flows parallel to the shoreline.

Data-driven prediction of wind pressure on low-rise buildings in complex heterogeneous terrains

This study presents a data-driven methodology for predicting the pressure coefficient statistics on the windward wall, roof, and leeward wall of low-rise buildings situated downwind of complex heterogeneous terrains. Two types of artificial neural network models were developed: the empirical parameter-based ANN (PANN) and the morphology-based ANN (MANN). Pressure data from wind tunnel tests on the Wind Engineering Research Field Laboratory (WERFL) building model (building height H = 4 m) in complex heterogeneous terrain were used to develop the ANN models. These models were evaluated against a non-linear fitted model to assess their predictive performances. PANN and MANN demonstrated superior performance in capturing the effects of terrain complexity on the mean (Cp,mean) and the root-mean-square (Cp,RMS) wind pressure coefficients for the windward wall, roof, and leeward wall. Optimal prediction was achieved with a terrain patch size of W × L = 4 × 2, equating to a full-scale area of approximately 72 m × 23 m. This suggests that the morphology within approximately 100 m × 50 m (25H× 12.5H) in front of a low-rise building has the greatest correlation with the wind pressure coefficient. Despite lower R2 values for max Cp,RMS on the leeward wall across all models, both PANN and MANN showed promising accuracy for the six outputs studied. Moreover, a global sensitivity analysis confirmed the impact of terrain roughness and complexity on the prediction models particularly on max Cp,RMS, and underscored the dominance of effective roughness length z0,eff and the coefficient of variation of roughness length COVz0 in influencing model outcomes.

How does a dynamic surface roughness affect snowpack modeling?

The SNOWPACK model is a cryosphere model which incorporates several environmental model parameters, one of which being the aerodynamic roughness length (z0). The z0 is considered a static parameter, however, research has shown that the z0 of the surface is variable due to the changing nature of the snowpack surface throughout the winter season. This study highlights the sensitivity of the z0 within the SNOWPACK model based on the outputs of sublimation, SWE, and sensible heat. The z0 values were calculated in two ways, anemometrically (z0-A), using a wind profile, and geometrically (z0-G), measuring surface geometry. Calculated z0-A values were between 1.03 × 10−6 to 0.12 m. The z0-G values were calculated from a terrestrial lidar scan using various resolution values of post-process resolutions. These resolutions of 0.01, 0.1, and 1 m resulted in z0-G values of 0.26, 0.08, and 0.01 m, respectively. Therefore, as the resolution coarsened, the z0-G values decreased. Lastly, these calculated z0-G values, a variable run, using weekly measured z0-G values, and 0.002 (SNOWPACK default), 0.02, and 0.2 m values were incorporated into the SNOWPACK model. When applied, cumulative sublimation, SWE, and sensible heat outputs varied by 131%, −71%, and −49%, when compared to the default z0 value used within the model.

A numerical simulation framework for wakes downstream of large wind farms based on equivalent roughness model

Accurate assessment of the wake effect of wind farm clusters is of great significance for the development of wind power bases, yet there is currently a deficiency in numerical simulation methods with high accuracy and simple modeling. To address this issue, a numerical simulation framework for large wind-farm wakes based on a wind farm parameterization model is proposed, and is then implemented based on the open-source CFD software OpenFOAM. In this framework, a newly proposed wind farm equivalent roughness model is adopted to parameterize wind farms and incorporated into the simulation via the wall stress model. To validate the method, the large-eddy simulation based on the actuator disk model resolving all the turbines in the wind farm is taken as a benchmark. Thirty two cases including spanwise infinite wind farms and finite wind farms with different streamwise turbine spacings, spanwise turbine spacings, wind turbine thrust coefficients, and roughness lengths of ground surface are set to analyze the sensitivity of the framework to different wind farm parameters. Results show that the proposed method predicts the velocity deficit and turbulence intensity downstream of the wind farm accurately. Compared to the classical wake superposition model, the prediction accuracy of the velocity deficit is improved by more than 30 %. Furthermore, without resolving the turbines using fine mesh, the framework shows a high potential to reduce computational costs compared with the turbine-resolved simulation.

About Height of the Surface Air Layer by Sodar Data

Average empirical estimations of the surface air layer height in Moscow have been received by the data of long-term acoustic remote sensing of the atmosphere using MODOS Doppler sodar of METEK (Germany) production. Based on the assumption that the average conditions are close to neutral stratification, this height, as the top of the quasi-linear section of the average long-term wind velocity profile in semi-logarithmic coordinates, is 40–60 m. The wind rotation height, i. e. the height of intersection of day and night wind profiles is on average 95 meters per year. The roughness length in conditions of loose but high urban development in vicinity of Moscow State University in Moscow is 5 m. According to the criterion of the constant wind direction in the surface air layer, its height appears in the average monthly wind direction profiles over the “dead zone” of the sodar (40 m) in approximately one case out of three and usually amounts to 60 m, less often 80 or 100 m. In the rest cases, it is apparently masked by “dead zone”. The average height of the surface layer according to this approach is probably a little less than 50 m, which is close to the estimate obtained from the logarithmic distribution of wind velocity with height in this layer. The daily course of the surface air layer height is noted by the largest values in the afternoon (80–100 m in summer under conditions of prevailing unstable stratification and 60–80 m in winter) and the smallest ones (less than 40 m) in the late evening and at night in summer and from evening to noon in winter.