A unified framework for aeroacoustics simulation of wind turbines

Zhi Cheng, Fue-Sang Lien, Eugene Yee and Hang Meng

Renewable Energy, 2022, vol. 188, issue C, 299-319

Abstract: In this paper, we evaluate the utility of an unified/integrated framework for the prediction of sound radiation from a wind turbine which tightly couples together the following model components: an actuator line model (ALM) used with a flow solver from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) such as an unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes or a large-eddy simulation (LES) for the prediction of the highly-disturbed flow field around a wind turbine; the Brooks, Pope, and Marcolini (BPM) method for determination of the rotor blade self-noise; and, the acoustics perturbation equation (APE) for the prediction of the acoustic field arising from the operation of a wind turbine using as input the noise sources obtained from ALM/CFD and the BPM method. The accuracy and stability of various components of the framework are validated carefully and systematically using four test cases: (1) simulation of noise propagation from a point sound source using APE and comparison of the results with Stokes’ law of sound attenuation; (2) simulation of the flow past a circular cylinder using CFD and the prediction of the sound radiation resulting from this flow using APE (with detailed comparisons of these results with some experimental and numerical data); (3) simulation of the flow field around a small-scale model wind turbine using ALM/CFD and comparison of these results with some experimental and numerical data; and, (4) computation of the flow and acoustic fields for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5-MW utility-scale reference wind turbine using the fully coupled ALM/CFD and BPM/APE schemes and comparison of these results with a blade- and hub-resolved CFD simulation for the flow coupled with the solution of the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkins (FW–H) equation for the prediction of the sound radiation. For the second test case, a detailed assessment is conducted on the efficacy of perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary conditions for ensuring the non-reflection of outgoing waves at the open domain boundaries. Finally, the unified/integrated framework consisting of ALM/CFD + BPM + APE is used to simulate the interference of the flow and acoustic fields arising from the operation of two wind turbines.

Keywords: Actuator line model; Acoustics perturbation equation; BPM model; Ffowcs Williams-Hawkins equation; Perfectly matched layer; Wind turbine aeroacoustics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:188:y:2022:i:c:p:299-319

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.01.120

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