A study of wind turbine power generation and turbine/tower interaction using large eddy simulation

Wind turbines are highly complex structures for numerical flow simulation. They normally comprise of a turbine mounted on a tower thus the movement of the turbine blades and the blade/tower interaction must be captured. In addition the ground effect Should also be included. There are many more important features of wind turbines and it is difficult to include all of them. A simplified set of features is chosen here for both the turbine and the tower to show how the method can begin to identify the main points connected with wind turbine wake generation and tip vortex tower interaction. An approach to modelling the rotating blades of a turbine is proposed here. The model uses point forces based oil blade element theory to model the blades and takes into account their time dependent motion. This means that local instantaneous velocities can be used as a basis for the blade element theory. The model is incorporated into a large eddy Simulation code and, although many important features are left out of the model, the velocity/power performance relation is generally of the correct order of magnitude. Suggested improvements to the method are discussed.