• Energy Research

AbstractThe presented work investigates the impact of different sheared velocity profiles in the atmospheric boundary layer on the characteristics of a wind turbine by modifying the wall roughness coefficients in the logarithmic velocity profile. Moreover, the rotor and wake characteristics in dependence of the turbulence boundary conditions are investigated. In variant I, the turbulence boundary conditions are defined in accordance to the logarithmic velocity profile with different wall roughness lengths. In variant II, the turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent viscosity remain independent of the velocity profile and represent the free‐stream turbulence level.With an increase of the shear in the velocity profile, the amplitudes in the 3/rev characteristics of rotor thrust and rotor torque, induction factors, and effective angles of attack are increased. In variant I, the overall levels of thrust coefficient are hardly affected by the velocity profiles resulting from different wall roughness length values. The power coefficient is reduced about 1%. Conversely, compared with variant II, a difference of 2% in the power coefficient has been detected. Moreover, the wake recovery process strongly depends on the turbulence boundary condition. Simulations are carried out on an industrial 900‐kW wind turbine with the incompressible U‐RANS solver THETA.

AbstractThe impact of different sheared velocity profiles on the performance prediction of a horizontal axis wind turbine in the atmospheric boundary layer is investigated. Firstly, the wall roughness in the analytical logarithmic description of the atmospheric boundary layer is varied to obtain different velocity profiles. Subsequently, it is proposed to replace the analytical logarithmic description of the atmospheric boundary layer by the time‐averaged velocity data of a precursor large eddy simulation (LES) and to reconstruct the turbulence of the velocity fluctuations. The LES data are introduced as inflow condition through a LES‐RANS interface in a one‐way coupling approach. Three different methods to reconstruct URANS turbulence values out of the velocity fluctuations are investigated. It is shown that the reconstruction method has an impact on the development of the velocity profile, turbulent kinetic energy, and the turbulent dissipation during the transport through the URANS domain. The different inflow data, which the horizontal axis wind turbine experiences, are responsible for changes in the overall rotor thrust (up to 2.7%) and rotor torque (up to 2.4%). Conversely, the induction factors and effective angles of attack hardly change and can well be compared with a blade element momentum method. Finally, the results of both approaches to prescribe the atmospheric boundary layer are compared. The thrust and power coefficients, and wake recovery are close to each other. Simulations are carried out on an industrial 900 kW wind turbine with the incompressible URANS solver THETA.

AbstractDLR's incompressible flow solver THETA is introduced for wind turbine applications on the isolated NREL phase VI Unsteady Aerodynamic Experiment rotor. The optimization of parameter settings for the prediction of attached and separated flows on the rotor is performed, including time step size, spatial discretization scheme, turbulence models and Chimera overset grid technique. Afterwards, a systematic study on the pressure distributions, rotor thrust and rotor torque for experimental series S, I and J is performed. The accuracy of results for wind velocities between 7 and 25 m s[[EQUATION1]], covering attached, partly separated and deep stalled flow conditions, is discussed. While good to excellent agreement between THETA sectional pressure distributions and the experimental reference data is achieved in attached flow and deep stall configurations, more efforts are needed to predict partly separated flow cases with comparable accuracy. A code‐to‐code comparison with DLR's compressible flow solver TAU enabled the quantification of differences in pressure prediction because of the use of incompressible and compressible flow solvers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract. A procedure to propagate longitudinal transient gusts through a flow field by using the resolved-gust approach is implemented in the URANS solver THETA. Both the gust strike of a 1−cos⁡() gust and an extreme operating gust following the IEC 61400-1 standard are investigated on the generic NREL 5 MW wind turbine at rated operating conditions. The impact of both gusts on pressure distributions, rotor thrust, rotor torque, and flow states on the blade are examined and quantified. The flow states on the rotor blade before the gust strike at maximum and minimum gust velocity are compared. An increased blade loading is detectable in the pressure coefficients and integrated blade loads. The friction force coefficients indicate the dynamic separation and re-attachment of the flow during the gust. Moreover, a verification of the method is performed by comparing the rotor torque during the extreme operating gust to results of FAST rotor code.