Study on the Wake of a Miniature Wind Turbine Using the Reynolds Stress Model

Jianxiao Hu, Qingshan Yang and Jian Zhang
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Jianxiao Hu: Beijing’s Key Laboratory of Structural Wind Engineering and Urban Wind Environment, School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Qingshan Yang: Beijing’s Key Laboratory of Structural Wind Engineering and Urban Wind Environment, School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Jian Zhang: Beijing’s Key Laboratory of Structural Wind Engineering and Urban Wind Environment, School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 10, 1-18

Abstract: The Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) is adopted to simulate the wind turbine wake and the simulation results are compared with the wind tunnel test data, simulation results from the standard k-? model and a modified k-? model. RSM shows good performance in predicting the turbine wakes velocity, turbulence intensity and the kinetic shear stress, while the k-? based models fail to predict either wakes velocity or turbulence intensity. Simulation results show that the wake velocity will be recovered up to 90% at around 10 D downstream of the turbine (D denotes turbine rotor diameter) and it stops at 91% at around 16 D downstream. The wake turbulence intensity reaches a maximum at around 5 D downstream of turbine. Further investigation shows that the horizontal profile of the wakes velocity can be approximated by a Gaussian distribution, and the turbulence intensity can be approximated by a bimodal distribution. The influence of the wakes effect is limited to within ±D in the across-wind direction. The turbine wakes show clear anisotropy, which could explain the incorrect estimation on the turbulence intensity with the extended k-? model.

Keywords: wind turbine wakes; Reynolds stress model; actuator disc; anisotropic turbulence; BEM (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: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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