On the Accuracy of uRANS and LES-Based CFD Modeling Approaches for Rotor and Wake Aerodynamics of the (New) MEXICO Wind Turbine Rotor Phase-III

Shantanu Purohit, Ijaz Fazil Syed Ahmed Kabir and E. Y. K. Ng
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Shantanu Purohit: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Block N3, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Ijaz Fazil Syed Ahmed Kabir: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Block N3, Singapore 639798, Singapore
E. Y. K. Ng: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Block N3, Singapore 639798, Singapore

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 16, 1-26

Abstract: This work presents a comparison study of the CFD modeling with two different turbulence modeling approaches viz. unsteady RANS and LES, on a full-scale model of the (New) MEXICO rotor wind turbine. The main emphasis of the paper is on the rotor and wake aerodynamics. Simulations are carried out for the three wind speeds considered in the MEXICO experiment (10, 15, and 24 ms ?1 ). The results of uRANS and LES are compared against the (New) MEXICO experimental measurements of pressure distributions, axial, radial, and azimuth traverse of three velocity components. The near wake characteristics and vorticity are also analyzed. The pressure distribution results show that the LES can predict the onset of flow separation more accurately than uRANS when the turbine operates in the stall condition. The LES can compute the flow structures in wake significantly better than the uRANS for the stall condition of the blade. For the design condition, the mean absolute error in axial and radial velocity components along radial traverse is less than 10% for both the modeling approaches, whereas tangential component error is less than 2% from the LES approach. The results also reveal that wake recovers faster in the uRANS approach, requiring further research of the far wake region using both CFD modeling approaches.

Keywords: wind turbine; large eddy simulation (LES); unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (uRANS) simulation; rotor aerodynamics; wake aerodynamics; vorticity (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: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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