Comparison of turbulence models for the computational fluid dynamics simulation of wind turbine wakes in the atmospheric boundary layer

Abstract

An elliptic computational fluid dynamics wake model based on the actuator disk concept is used to simulate a wind turbine, approximated by a disk upon which a distribution of forces, defined as axial momentum sources, is applied on an incoming non-uniform shear flow. The rotor is supposed to be uniformly loaded with the exerted forces estimated as a function of the incident wind speed, thrust coefficient and rotor diameter. The model is assessed in terms of wind speed deficit and added turbulence intensity for different turbulence models and is validated from experimental measurements of the Sexbierum wind turbine experiment.The elliptic model is also compared with other wake models in the literature on the basis of parabolic and large eddy simulation approximations.

A New Analytical Wake Model for Yawed Wind Turbines

“…Additionally, as pointed out by Cabezón et al [19], the common two-equation RANS model like the standard k-ε model could not provide good prediction for the wind turbine wakes, while RSM shows better performance. Some of the modified two-equation model may improve the accuracy but they are still very dependent on how their parameters are tuned for different case.…”

Thek-ε-fPmodel applied to double wind turbine wakes using different actuator disk force methods

“…Different types of AD loading are proposed in the literature. The most simple approach is a uniformly distributed loading, in which only the total amount of the normal force FN is modeled and it is kept constant during the simulations [7,10]:…”

Validation of the simpleFoam (RANS) solver for the atmospheric boundary layer in complex terrain

“…The wall function depends on the dimensionless roughness height k + s = k s u * /ν, where k s is the size of the sand grain. Following [2], the constant C s is calculated from a first order matching between the law of the wall and the inlet profile to ensure continuity for the wall functions and its first derivative, giving k s = Ez 0 /C s [12].…”