Turbulent Inflow Generation for Large-Eddy Simulation of Winds around Complex Terrain

Abstract

Accurate turbulent inflow conditions are needed to broaden the application of the large-eddy simulation technique to predict winds around arbitrarily complex terrain. We investigate the concept of buoyancy perturbations with colored noise to trigger turbulence in upstream flows approaching complex terrain regions. Random perturbations are imposed on the source term in the pseudo-temperature transport equation. These perturbations are effective within three-dimensional boxes and scaled using a bulk Richardson number defined for each box. We apply the turbulent inflow generation technique to predict winds around the Askervein and Bolund Hills under neutrally stratified conditions. We find that a common value for the bulk Richardson number works well for a variety of flow problems. Additionally, we show that the height of the perturbation box plays an important role in the accuracy of the predictions around complex terrain. We consistently obtained good results for both simulation cases when the perturbation box height was made a fraction of the Obukhov length scale.

Keywords

• complex terrain
• inflow
• large-eddy simulation
• turbulence
• wind