Identification

Title

Investigating wind turbine impacts on near-wake flow using profiling lidar data and large-eddy simulations with an actuator disk model

Abstract

Wind turbine impacts on the atmospheric flow are investigated using data from the Crop Wind Energy Experiment (CWEX-11) and large-eddy simulations (LESs) utilizing a generalized actuator disk (GAD) wind turbine model. CWEX-11 employed velocity-azimuth display (VAD) data from two Doppler lidar systems to sample vertical profiles of flow parameters across the rotor depth both upstream and in the wake of an operating 1.5 MW wind turbine. Lidar and surface observations obtained during four days of July 2011 are analyzed to characterize the turbine impacts on wind speed and flow variability, and to examine the sensitivity of these changes to atmospheric stability. Significant velocity deficits ( VD ) are observed at the downstream location during both convective and stable portions of four diurnal cycles, with large, sustained deficits occurring during stable conditions. Variances of the streamwise velocity component, σu , likewise show large increases downstream during both stable and unstable conditions, with stable conditions supporting sustained small increases of σu , while convective conditions featured both larger magnitudes and increased variability, due to the large coherent structures in the background flow. Two representative case studies, one stable and one convective, are simulated using LES with a GAD model at 6 m resolution to evaluate the compatibility of the simulation framework with validation using vertically profiling lidar data in the near wake region. Virtual lidars were employed to sample the simulated flow field in a manner consistent with the VAD technique. Simulations reasonably reproduced aggregated wake VD characteristics, albeit with smaller magnitudes than observed, while σu values in the wake are more significantly underestimated. The results illuminate the limitations of using a GAD in combination with coarse model resolution in the simulation of near wake physics, and validation thereof using VAD data.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7k35vwb

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-07-01T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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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