Open AccessHybrid vortex simulations of wind turbines using a three‐dimensional viscous–inviscid panel method
Author(s) -
RamosGarcía Néstor,
Hejlesen Mads Mølholm,
Sørensen Jens Nørkær,
Walther Jens Honoré
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
wind energy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1099-1824
pISSN - 1095-4244
DOI - 10.1002/we.2126
Subject(s) - wake , inviscid flow , vortex , turbine , aerodynamics , horseshoe vortex , aerospace engineering , wake turbulence , wind power , vorticity , wind tunnel , turbine blade , airfoil , aeroelasticity , mechanics , computational fluid dynamics , marine engineering , physics , engineering , electrical engineering
A hybrid filament‐mesh vortex method is proposed and validated to predict the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine rotors and to simulate the resulting wake. Its novelty consists of using a hybrid method to accurately simulate the wake downstream of the wind turbine while reducing the computational time used by the method. The proposed method uses a hybrid approach, where the near wake is resolved by using vortex filaments, which carry the vorticity shed by the trailing edge of the blades. The interaction of the vortex filaments in the near vicinity of the wind turbine is evaluated using a direct calculation, whereas the contribution from the large downstream wake is calculated using a mesh‐based method. The hybrid method is first validated in detail against the well‐known MEXICO experiment, using the direct filament method as a comparison. The second part of the validation includes a study of the influence of the time‐integration scheme used for evolving the wake in time, aeroelastic simulations of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory 5 MW wind turbine and an analysis of the central processing unit time showing the gains of using the hybrid filament‐mesh method. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.