MEAM Seminar: “Laboratory Investigations of Wind Turbine Wakes at Field Reynolds Numbers”
April 25, 2023 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
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Venue
Wind turbines and wind farms present unique challenges—fluid mechanically—as they combine extremely high Reynolds numbers with additional time scales imposed by the rotation, and three-dimensional effects. This implies that resolved numerical solutions are too computationally expensive and investigations in conventional wind tunnels are impossible due to the flow speeds and rotational rates needed in order to satisfy the dynamic similarity requirements. At Princeton, we achieve the conditions a large wind turbine experiences, experimentally, by compressing the air around a model-scale turbine up to 238 bar. This yields conditions similar to those experienced by a field-sized turbine using a model that is only 20 cm in diameter. High pressure enables tests at high Reynolds numbers but at low velocities, which implies that realistic non-dimensional frequencies can be tested even with such a small model. This unique feature is used both to study rotating wind turbines and their wakes, as well as the unsteady aerodynamics that are involved in these machines.

