Aerodynamic analysis of large wind farms using two-scale coupled modelling approaches.

Abstract

The effects of turbine aerodynamics and response characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer on the overall wind farm efficiency are investigated in this research. Various wind farm modelling strategies, which include a theoretical and several CFD models, are presented. This study consists of three main parts: (i) improve and validate an existing theoretical wind farm model, (ii) infinitely large wind farm modelling with actuator-disc and fully-resolved turbine models, and (iii) finite-size wind farm modelling with a numerical weather prediction model. In the first part, an extended theoretical model based on a two-scale coupled momentum balance method is proposed to estimate aerodynamic effects of wind turbine towers on the performance of large wind farms. The modified theoretical model predicts that the optimal turbine spacing should increase with the value of normalised support-structure drag, as well as additional parameters describing the response characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer to the total farm drag. The Detached-Eddy simulations of a periodic array of fully staggered actuator discs (AD) show a reasonably good agreement (within 10% in the prediction of power) with the modified theoretical model. In the second part, a fully resolved (FR) NREL 5MW turbine model is employed in two URANS simulations (with and without the turbine tower) of a fully developed wind farm boundary layer. The FR-URANS results show stronger tower effects than both AD-RANS and theoretical model predictions, which is a strong indication of the necessity of considering turbine support structure within large wind farm models. The possibility of performing DDES is also investigated with the same FR turbine model and periodic domain setup. The results show complex turbulent flow characteristics within a large wind farm, where typical hairpin and hub vortices have been clearly captured. In addition, the computational cost of DDES has been found to be similar to URANS (for a given number of rotations), which is a positive sign for conducting DDES in future studies. In the third part, a numerical weather prediction model is used as a realistic farm-scale flow model to investigate how the streamwise pressure gradient, Coriolis force and acceleration/deceleration terms in the farm-scale momentum balance equation tend to change in time. The results suggest that the streamwise pressure gradient may be enhanced substantially by the resistance caused by the wind farm, whereas its influence on the other two terms appears to be relatively minor. These results suggest the importance of modelling the farm-induced pressure gradient accurately for various weather conditions in future studies of large wind farms