Effects of Freestream Turbulence in a Model Wind Turbine Wake

• Published in: Energies (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 10; p. 830
• Main Authors: Jin, Yaqing, Liu, Huiwen, Aggarwal, Rajan, Singh, Arvind, Chamorro, Leonardo P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2016
• Subjects: Atmospheric boundary layer; Computational fluid dynamics; Engineering; Evolution; integral length scale; large-scale motions; Low turbulence; Rotors; Spectra; Turbines; Turbulence; Turbulent flow; Velocity; wake; Wind farms; wind turbine; Wind turbines; United States > US; Illinois
• ISSN: 1996-1073; 1996-1073
• DOI: 10.3390/en9100830

The flow structure in the wake of a model wind turbine is explored under negligible and high turbulence in the freestream region of a wind tunnel at R e similar to 7 10 4 . Attention is placed on the evolution of the integral scale and the contribution of the large-scale motions from the background flow. Hotwire anemometry was used to obtain the streamwise velocity at various streamwise and spanwise locations. The pre-multiplied spectral difference of the velocity fluctuations between the two cases shows a significant energy contribution from the background turbulence on scales larger than the rotor diameter. The integral scale along the rotor axis is found to grow linearly with distance, independent of the incoming turbulence levels. This scale appears to reach that of the incoming flow in the high turbulence case at x / d similar to 35-40. The energy contribution from the turbine to the large-scale flow structures in the low turbulence case increases monotonically with distance. Its growth rate is reduced past x / d similar to 6-7. There, motions larger than the rotor contribute similar to 50 % of the total energy, suggesting that the population of large-scale motions is more intense in the intermediate field. In contrast, the wake in the high incoming turbulence is quickly populated with large-scale motions and plateau at x / d similar to 3 .