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The near-field of a lab-scale wind turbine in tailored turbulent shear flows

The near-field of a lab-scale wind turbine in tailored turbulent shear flows
The near-field of a lab-scale wind turbine in tailored turbulent shear flows
Real wind turbines experience a wide range of turbulent shear flows that naturally occur within the atmospheric boundary layer, however, these are often difficult to simulate in experiments. An active grid was used to expand the testable parameter space compared to conventional methods. Specific focus was
placed on decoupling the shear from the turbulence intensity. Particle image velocimetry was used to capture the mean velocity and velocity fluctuation fields in the near-field wake of a model wind turbine subjected to seven different combinations of shear and turbulence intensity. It was found that if the incoming mean profile was removed, the velocity deficit is approximately symmetric about the hub, even for highly sheared cases. The absolute wake velocity deficit profiles are asymmetric for the sheared cases, and the combination of the wake and shear flow results in a local increase in shear on the high-velocity side of the wake immediately downstream of the turbine. This in turn leads to higher turbulence production within that region, leading to larger velocity fluctuations. It is also demonstrated that the mean power of the model turbine is not particularly sensitive to the incoming shear, but the power fluctuations scale linearly with the incoming turbulence intensity.
lab-scale, shear flow, tailored turbulence, wind turbine
0960-1481
735-748
Li, L.
3d47f862-e449-42d4-be13-5bf827cf8383
Hearst, Robert J.
965708e6-ddf4-4cbb-af74-866bb4cdb4de
Ferreira, Manuel A.
bdfedfb9-85f6-4dbb-b031-a977cb8f145d
Ganapathisubramani, Bharathram
5e69099f-2f39-4fdd-8a85-3ac906827052
Li, L.
3d47f862-e449-42d4-be13-5bf827cf8383
Hearst, Robert J.
965708e6-ddf4-4cbb-af74-866bb4cdb4de
Ferreira, Manuel A.
bdfedfb9-85f6-4dbb-b031-a977cb8f145d
Ganapathisubramani, Bharathram
5e69099f-2f39-4fdd-8a85-3ac906827052

Li, L., Hearst, Robert J., Ferreira, Manuel A. and Ganapathisubramani, Bharathram (2020) The near-field of a lab-scale wind turbine in tailored turbulent shear flows. Renewable Energy, 149, 735-748. (doi:10.1016/j.renene.2019.12.049).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Real wind turbines experience a wide range of turbulent shear flows that naturally occur within the atmospheric boundary layer, however, these are often difficult to simulate in experiments. An active grid was used to expand the testable parameter space compared to conventional methods. Specific focus was
placed on decoupling the shear from the turbulence intensity. Particle image velocimetry was used to capture the mean velocity and velocity fluctuation fields in the near-field wake of a model wind turbine subjected to seven different combinations of shear and turbulence intensity. It was found that if the incoming mean profile was removed, the velocity deficit is approximately symmetric about the hub, even for highly sheared cases. The absolute wake velocity deficit profiles are asymmetric for the sheared cases, and the combination of the wake and shear flow results in a local increase in shear on the high-velocity side of the wake immediately downstream of the turbine. This in turn leads to higher turbulence production within that region, leading to larger velocity fluctuations. It is also demonstrated that the mean power of the model turbine is not particularly sensitive to the incoming shear, but the power fluctuations scale linearly with the incoming turbulence intensity.

Text
Li, Hearst, Ferreira & Ganapathisubramani (Renew Energ, 2020) - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
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Accepted/In Press date: 9 December 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 13 December 2019
Published date: April 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the EPSRC and NSERC . The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest that impact this study. BG and RJH conceived of the idea for this work. MAF designed the model turbine. RJH conducted the experiments with help from MAF. LL performed the analysis and was the primary author of the manuscript with support from RJH. All authors read and contributed to the manuscript. Preliminary results from this work were presented at the Interdisciplinary Turbulence Initiative Conference in Bertinoro, Italy in 2018 [ 35 ]. The present investigation covers significantly more breadth and is wholly original. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 The Authors
Keywords: lab-scale, shear flow, tailored turbulence, wind turbine

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 439115
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/439115
ISSN: 0960-1481
PURE UUID: 7a05a63d-e88c-4b45-ba14-d9b8f2a36ddd
ORCID for Manuel A. Ferreira: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2428-0284
ORCID for Bharathram Ganapathisubramani: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9817-0486

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Date deposited: 03 Apr 2020 16:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:55

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Contributors

Author: L. Li
Author: Robert J. Hearst
Author: Manuel A. Ferreira ORCID iD

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