Development of a Computational System to Improve Wind Farm Layout, Part II: Wind Turbine Wakes Interaction

The second part of this work describes a wind turbine Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation capable of modeling wake effects. The work is intended to establish a computational framework from which to investigate wind farm layout. Following the first part of this work that described the near wake flow field, the physical domain of the validated model in the near wake was adapted and extended to include the far wake. Additionally, the numerical approach implemented allowed to efficiently model the effects of the wake interaction between rows in a wind farm with reduced computational costs. The influence of some wind farm design parameters on the wake development was assessed: Tip Speed Ratio (TSR), free-stream velocity, and pitch angle. The results showed that the velocity and turbulence intensity profiles in the far wake are dependent on the TSR. The wake profile did not present significant sensitivity to the pitch angle for values kept close to the designed condition. The capability of the proposed CFD model showed to be consistent when compared with field data and kinematical models results, presenting similar ranges of wake deficit. In conclusion, the computational models proposed in this work can be used to improve wind farm layout considering wake effects.