Effect of the tip speed ratio on the wake characteristics of wind turbines using LBM‐LES

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the wake characteristics of Zell 2000 wind turbine under different tip velocity ratios are studied by using the lattice Boltzmann method and large eddy simulation. The adaptive mesh refinement method is performed to capture the fine flow structure and wake characteristics development. In this paper, we mainly focus on the effect of the tip speed ratio on the flow structure and unsteady characteristics of wind turbine wake. The three‐dimensional flow vorticity structures, the section vorticity diagram, the pressure fluctuation of wake and the lift coefficient of wind turbine wake are utilized to explore the effect of the tip speed ratio on the unsteady physics mechanism of wind turbine wake. With the increase of the tip speed ratio, the distance between two adjacent vortex rings along the axial direction gradually decreases, as the position of the broken vortex circles gradually approaches the center of the blade, separated vortexes are rapidly generated, and the coherent structure appears closer to the wind turbine. A relationship is established between the tip speed ratios and the positions of the broken vortex circles. It is further found that the dominant frequency amplitude gradually increases with the increase of tip speed ratio and the pressure amplitude spectra of vortex increases with the decrease of the distance between the wake and the center of the blade axis. The above series of studies can provide significant physical insight into deep understanding the influence of the tip speed ratio on the wake characteristics of wind turbines.

Keywords

• LBM‐LES
• pressure spectra
• vortex structure
• wake characteristics
• wind turbine