Loading Events

MEAM Seminar: “Fluid Mechanics and Turbulence in Extended Wind Farms”

February 12, 2019 at 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
Details
Date: February 12, 2019
Time: 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
Event Category: Seminar
  • Event Tags:
  • Organizer
    Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
    Phone: 215-746-1818
    Venue
    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street
    Philadelphia
    PA 19104
    Google Map

    In this presentation we discuss several properties of the flow structure and turbulence in the wind turbine array boundary layer (WTABL). This particular type of shear flow develops when the atmospheric boundary layer interacts with an array of large wind turbines. Based on such understanding, we aim to develop reduced order, analytically tractable models. These are important engineering tools for wind energy, both for design and control purposes. We will focus on two fluid mechanical themes relevant to wind farm design and control. The first topic deals with spectral characteristics of the fluctuations in power generated by an array of wind turbines in a wind farm. We show that modeling of the spatio-temporal structure of canonical turbulent boundary layers coupled with variants of the Kraichnan’s random sweeping hypothesis can be used to develop analytical predictions of the frequency spectrum of power fluctuations of wind farms. In the second part we describe a simple (deterministic) dynamic wake model, its use for wind farm control, and its extension to the case of yawed wind turbines. The work to be presented arose from collaborations with Juliaan Bossuyt, Johan Meyers, Richard Stevens, Tony Martinez, Michael Wilczek, Carl Shapiro and Dennice Gayme. We are grateful for National Science Foundation support.