| Wind and Structures Volume 15, Number 1, January 2012, pages 17-26 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/was.2012.15.1.017 | |
Computing turbulent far-wake development behind a wind turbine with and without swirl | |
Yingying Hu, Siva Parameswaran, Jiannan Tan, Suranga Dharmarathne, Neha Marathe, Zixi Chen, Ronald Grife and Andrew Swift
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| Abstract [Buy Article] | |
| Modeling swirling wakes is of considerable interest to wind farm designers. The present work is an attempt to develop a computational tool to understand free, far-wake development behind a single rotating wind turbine. Besides the standard momentum and continuity equations from the boundary layer theory in two dimensions, an additional equation for the conservation of angular momentum is introduced to study axisymmetric swirl effects on wake growth. Turbulence is simulated with two options: the standard k-e model and the Reynolds Stress transport model. A finite volume method is used to discretize the governing equations for mean flow and turbulence quantities. A marching algorithm of expanding grids is employed to enclose the growing far-wake and to solve the equations implicitly at every axial step. Axisymmetric far-wakes with/without swirl are studied at different Reynolds numbers and swirl numbers. Wake characteristics such as wake width, half radius, velocity profiles and pressure profiles are computed. Compared with the results obtained under similar flow conditions using the computational software, FLUENT, this far-wake model shows simplicity with acceptable accuracy, covering large wake regions in far-wake study. | |
| Key Words | |
| far wake; swirl; boundary layer; self-similarity; k-e model; Reynolds Stress transport model. | |
| Address | |
| Yingying Hu, Siva Parameswaran, Jiannan Tan, Suranga Dharmarathne and Zixi Chen: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA Neha Marathe and Andrew Swift : Wind Science and Engineering Research Center, Department of Civil Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA Ronald Grife : Vestas Technology R&D Americas, Inc., USA | |
