Assessment of Turbulence Modelling in the Wake of an Actuator Disk with a Decaying Turbulence Inflow

Applied Sciences

Christian Masson¹  Hugo Olivares-Espinosa¹  Louis Dufresne¹  Stefan Ivanell²  Karl Nilsson²  Simon-Philippe Breton² 

[1] Department of Mechanical Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, 1100 Notre-Dame Ouest, Montréal, QC H3C 1K3, Canada;Wind Energy Section, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University Campus Gotland, Cramérgatan 3, 62165 Visby, Sweden;

关键词: wind turbine wakes;    turbulence;    actuator disk;    LES;    wind tunnel;    OpenFOAM;   

DOI  :  10.3390/app8091530

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The characteristics of the turbulence field in the wake produced by a wind turbine model are studied. To this aim, a methodology is developed and applied to replicate wake measurements obtained in a decaying homogeneous turbulence inflow produced by a wind tunnel. In this method, a synthetic turbulence field is generated to be employed as an inflow of Large-Eddy Simulations performed to model the flow development of the decaying turbulence as well as the wake flow behind an actuator disk. The implementation is carried out on the OpenFOAM platform, resembling a well-documented procedure used for wake flow simulations. The proposed methodology is validated by comparing with experimental results, for two levels of turbulence at inflow and disks with two different porosities. It is found that mean velocities and turbulent kinetic energy behind the disk are well estimated. The development of turbulence lengthscales behind the disk resembles what is observed in the free flow, predicting the ambient turbulence lengthscales to dominate across the wake, with little effect of shear from the wake envelope. However, observations of the power spectra confirm that shear yields a boost to the turbulence energy within the wake noticeable only in the low turbulence case. The results obtained show that the present implementation can successfully be used in the modelling and analysis of turbulence in wake flows.

【 授权许可】

Unknown