Data-driven quantification of model-form uncertainty in Reynolds-averaged simulations of wind farms

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics using the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) remains the most costeffective approach to study wake flows and power losses in wind farms. The underlying assumptions associated with turbulence closures is one of the biggest sources of errors and uncertainties in the model predictions. This work aims to quantify model-form uncertainties in RANS simulations of wind farms by perturbing the Reynolds stress tensor through a data-driven machine-learning technique. To this end, the extreme gradient boosting algorithm is validated and employed to predict the perturbation amount and direction of the modeled Reynolds stress toward the limiting states of turbulence on the Barycentric map such that the perturbed Reynolds stress returns a more accurate representation of the Reynolds stress. The model is trained on high-fidelity data obtained from large-eddy simulation of a specific wind farm, and it is tested on two other (unseen) wind farms with distinct layouts. The results indicate that, unlike the data-free approach in which a uniform and constant perturbation amount is applied to the entire computational domain, the proposed framework yields an optimal estimation of the uncertainty bounds for the RANS-predicted quantities of interest, including the wake velocity, turbulence intensity, and power losses in wind farms.