Comparing different CFD wind turbine modelling approaches with wind tunnel measurements

The performance of a model wind turbine is simulated with three different CFD methods: actuator disk, actuator line and a fully resolved rotor. The simulations are compared with each other and with measurements from a wind tunnel experiment. The actuator disk is the least accurate and most cost-efficient, and the fully resolved rotor is the most accurate and least cost-efficient. The actuator line method is believed to lie in between the two ends of the scale. The fully resolved rotor produces superior wake velocity results compared to the actuator models. On average it also produces better results for the force predictions, although the actuator line method had a slightly better match for the design tip speed. The open source CFD tool box, OpenFOAM, was used for the actuator disk and actuator line calculations, whereas the market leading commercial CFD code, ANSYS/FLUENT, was used for the fully resolved rotor approach.