Wake Statistics of Different-Scale Wind Turbines under Turbulent Boundary Layer Inflow
Xiaolei Yang,
Daniel Foti,
Christopher Kelley,
David Maniaci,
Fotis Sotiropoulos
Affiliations
Xiaolei Yang
The State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Daniel Foti
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA
Christopher Kelley
Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.), Albuquerque, NM 87185, USA
David Maniaci
Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.), Albuquerque, NM 87185, USA
Fotis Sotiropoulos
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11790, USA
Subscale wind turbines can be installed in the field for the development of wind technologies, for which the blade aerodynamics can be designed in a way similar to that of a full-scale wind turbine. However, it is not clear whether the wake of a subscale turbine, which is located closer to the ground and faces different incoming turbulence, is also similar to that of a full-scale wind turbine. In this work we investigate the wakes from a full-scale wind turbine of rotor diameter 80 m and a subscale wind turbine of rotor diameter of 27 m using large-eddy simulation with the turbine blades and nacelle modeled using actuator surface models. The blade aerodynamics of the two turbines are the same. In the simulations, the two turbines also face the same turbulent boundary inflows. The computed results show differences between the two turbines for both velocity deficits and turbine-added turbulence kinetic energy. Such differences are further analyzed by examining the mean kinetic energy equation.
