Wake modeling with the Actuator Disc concept

The wakes induced by the wind turbines are modeled with the finite-volume code WindSim, based on the solving of the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations of an Atmospheric Boundary Layer. The RANS equations of an uncompressible flow are solved with a multigrid coupled solver (MIGAL); turbulence is closed with the RNG k-epsilon model. The rotor of a wind turbine is modeled by an actuator disc providing a resistive force which is calculated from the thrust coefficient curve of wind turbine. The axial thrust can be distributed over the swept area in three different manners: by a uniform, parabolic or a polynomial distribution. A wake is therefore generated downstream of each turbine with wake deficit and induced turbulence. When using the actuator disc technique it is also interesting to observe how the wake-wake, wake-terrain interactions are predicted; moreover, also simulations with actuator discs and flows with thermal effects can be carried out. In this work we present first a series of simulations over a single turbine for a grid sensitivity study, in the second part a validation against production data from the offshore wind farm Horns Rev is presented. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.