Identification

Title

A simulation study on risks to wind turbine arrays from thunderstorm downbursts in different atmospheric stability conditions

Abstract

Thunderstorm downbursts have been reported to cause damage or failure to wind turbine arrays. We extend a large-eddy simulation model used in previous work to generate downburst-related inflow fields with a view toward defining correlated wind fields that all turbines in an array would experience together during a downburst. We are also interested in establishing what role contrasting atmospheric stability conditions can play on the structural demands on the turbines. This interest is because the evening transition period, when thunderstorms are most common, is also when there is generally acknowledged time-varying stability in the atmospheric boundary layer. Our results reveal that the structure of a downburst's ring vortices and dissipation of its outflow play important roles in the separate inflow fields for turbines located at different parts of the array; these effects vary with stability. Interacting with the ambient winds, the outflow of a downburst is found to have greater impacts in an "average" sense on structural loads for turbines farther from the touchdown center in the stable cases. Worst-case analyses show that the largest extreme loads, although somewhat dependent on the specific structural load variable considered, depend on the location of the turbine and on the prevailing atmospheric stability. The results of our calculations show the highest simulated foreaft tower bending moment to be 85.4 MN-m, which occurs at a unit sited in the array farther from touchdown center of the downburst initiated in a stable boundary layer.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7v40znc

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

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Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

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Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-08-31T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact