Computational Fluid Dynamics Approach to Predict the Actual Wind Speed over Complex Terrain

This paper proposes a procedure for predicting the actual wind speed for flow over complex terrain with CFD. It converts a time-series of wind speed data acquired from field observations into a time-series data of actual scalar wind speed by using non-dimensional wind speed parameters, which are determined beforehand with the use of CFD output. The accuracy and reproducibility of the prediction procedure were investigated by simulating the flow with CFD with the use of high spatial resolution (5 m) surface elevation data for the Noma Wind Park in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The errors of the predicted average monthly wind speeds relative to the observed values were less than approximately 20%.