Predicting Wind Turbine Wake Breakdown Using a Free Vortex Wake Code

When modeling wind turbine wake recovery, the location of wake breakdown plays a crucial role. The breakdown is caused by a rapid deformation of the helical near-wake vortex structure that is triggered by the pairing of successive blade tip vortices. In this paper, the capability of a cost-efficient...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:AIAA journal 2020-11, Vol.58 (11), p.4672-4685
Main Authors: Marten, D, Paschereit, C. O, Huang, X, Meinke, M, Schröder, W, Müller, J, Oberleithner, K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuation
Blade tips
Breakdown
Filaments
Large eddy simulation
Perturbation
Rotor blades
Rotor blades (turbomachinery)
Trailing edge flaps
Turbines
Turbulent wind
Velocity distribution
Vortex filaments
Vortices
Wakes
Wind turbines
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Summary:When modeling wind turbine wake recovery, the location of wake breakdown plays a crucial role. The breakdown is caused by a rapid deformation of the helical near-wake vortex structure that is triggered by the pairing of successive blade tip vortices. In this paper, the capability of a cost-efficient lifting-line free vortex wake code to accurately predict the wake breakdown location and its underlying mechanisms is demonstrated and validated against simulation results of a large-eddy simulation solver and additional data from the literature. Furthermore, this work investigates a technique to accelerate the breakdown of wind turbine wakes. The onset of wake breakdown is caused by perturbations that travel along the helical structure of the wake and grow via mutual-induction interaction between neighboring vortex filaments. To accelerate wake breakdown, the blade tip vortices are perturbed at different frequencies via trailing-edge flaps located in the outboard region of the rotor blades. Through the evaluation of the perturbation growth rates and the analysis of velocity fields, it is shown that for a multi-megawatt wind turbine operating in a turbulent wind field, the wake breakdown position can be significantly affected by a moderate flap actuation amplitude if excited at an appropriate frequency.
ISSN:0001-1452
1533-385X
DOI:10.2514/1.J058308