A study of the wind turbine wake dynamics in the neutral boundary layer using large eddy simulation

Abstract

Abstract Accurate prediction of atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) flow requires great importance for optimization of wind farms in influence by the wake from upstream turbines. In this paper three-dimensional transient turbulent flow combining with actuator-disc model for the 1.5 MW wind turbine designed and optimized using airfoil families of National Renewable Energy Lab over flat terrain through case of a neutral turbulent boundary-layer are validated. Large eddy simulation (LES) was used to potentially provide the kind of high-resolution spatial and temporal information needed to investigate the characteristics of a wind-turbine wake. Furthermore, Spatial and temporal characteristics of the flow are examined using OpenFOAM software (The OpenFOAM Foundation, 2013). After verifying that the code is performing consistently, neutral initial profiles are constructed from two years data analysis of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) at met mast of Hovsore in Denmark and are implemented into Large Eddy Simulation code. In general, the characteristics of the wakes simulated with the proposed large eddy simulation (LES) framework are in good agreement with several wake characteristics, such as the velocity deficit, centreline location, and wake width as metrics for model verification. The results demonstrate that, despite its simplicity, the actuator disc model can give very useful information when developing a wind farm in neutral atmospheric conditions.