Comparison of Different Driving Modes for the Wind Turbine Wake in Wind Tunnels

Bingzheng Dou, Zhanpei Yang, Michele Guala, Timing Qu, Liping Lei and Pan Zeng
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Bingzheng Dou: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Zhanpei Yang: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Michele Guala: St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, Department of Civil, Environmental, & Geo-Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55414, USA
Timing Qu: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Liping Lei: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Pan Zeng: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: The wake of upstream wind turbine is known to affect the operation of downstream turbines and the overall efficiency of the wind farm. Wind tunnel experiments provide relevant information for understanding and modeling the wake and its dependency on the turbine operating conditions. There are always two main driving modes to operate turbines in a wake experiment: (1) the turbine rotor is driven and controlled by a motor, defined active driving mode; (2) the rotor is driven by the incoming wind and subject to a drag torque, defined passive driving mode. The effect of the varying driving mode on the turbine wake is explored in this study. The mean wake velocities, turbulence intensities, skewness and kurtosis of the velocity time-series estimated from hot-wire anemometry data, were obtained at various downstream locations, in a uniform incoming flow wind tunnel and in an atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel. The results show that there is not a significant difference in the mean wake velocity between these two driving modes. An acceptable agreement is observed in the comparison of wake turbulence intensity and higher-order statistics in the two wind tunnels.

Keywords: wind turbine; wake effect; wind tunnel experiment; turbulence intensity; driving mode (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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