Investigation of wind turbine flow and wake

This paper is dedicated to the investigation and analysis of wind turbine wake. An experimental work is undertaken in wind tunnel on a horizontal axis wind turbine model. The velocity field in the wake is measured using PIV with phase synchronization in order to relate velocity and vortices to the rotating blades. The tip vortices are investigated in successive azimuthal positions of the rotor. A specially developed algorithm based on the circulation maximum detects the positions of the vortex cores and permits to use conditional averaging technique. The analysis of obtained velocity fields enables to determine the vortex core diameter, the swirl velocity distribution and the vortex diffusion as functions of the vortex age. The quality of obtained results permits to use them as reference for the validation of numerical computations.