Title: Investigations on the use of URANS equations to characterise the wind turbine wake in a non-neutral boundary layer

Authors: Siheme Guezmir; Amina Mataoui; Ouahiba Guerri

Addresses: Laboratory of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of Fluids (LMFTA), University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB), Algiers, Algeria ' Laboratory of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of Fluids (LMFTA), University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB), Algiers, Algeria ' Centre de Développement des Energies Renouvelables (CDER), Route de L'observatoire, BP 62 Bouzaréah, 16340, Algiers, Algeria

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show to what extent unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations, coupled to the actuator disk (AD) theory, could simulate the flow in the wake of wind turbines, taking into account atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) thermal stratification. First, the URANS/AD model is validated by the computation of the flow in the wake of a porous disk modelling a small wind turbine. Then, the investigations are applied to a large wind turbine in a neutral and non-neutral ABL. The obtained velocity contours and profiles are compared to available LES results. The effects of the thermal stratification on the added turbulence and expected turbine power are evaluated. The results obtained show the ability of URANS/AD calculations to characterise wind turbine wakes in a non-neutral ABL.

Keywords: wind turbine wake; non-neutral boundary layer; atmospheric boundary layer; ABL; CFD; unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes; URANS.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2024.139334

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2024 Vol.24 No.4, pp.215 - 225

Received: 06 Jan 2022
Received in revised form: 15 Apr 2023
Accepted: 22 Apr 2023
Published online: 01 Jul 2024 *

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