Integration of body force methods for higher precision Wake Modelling simulations for offshore applications

A wind turbine extract energy from the wind and consequently the wind speed downstream of the wind turbine is reduced. The low wind speed area downstream of a wind turbine is called a wake. Wakes imposes losses in the energy production from wind turbines. In particular as the wind farms get bigger and bigger, containing up to several hundred wind turbines, the wake losses have become an increasingly important issue within the wind sector. The aim of this PhD study is to establish accurate wake models based on CFD, Computational Fluid Dynamics. The models will be use to optimize the position of each turbine within a wind farm in order to reduce the wake losses. Making wind energy more profitable both in terms of increased energy production but also to reduce the loads on the wind turbines lowering the maintenance costs.

A Nordic Consortium was initialized in 2009 as a close collaboration between KTH Royal Institute of Technology, The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Gotland University. Additionally a number of industrial partners have been involved, among them W indSim AS. The aim of the Nordic Consortium is to increase the understanding of flows inside and around wind farm, in particular wake effects in large off shore farms. The PhD study will be performed within the framework of the Nordic Consortium to ens ure that the experience from the larger research group and fundamental studies of the flow around wind turbines and numerical modelling is used. The aim is to further develop and implement the models with intermediate complexity to improve the industrial codes. The software WindSim is today widely used commercially and it is very suitable for wind estimation since it is has a user friendly interface and is specialized for this purpose. It also has models for turbine representation that allows simulations where interaction between turbines is possible. This is needed when simulating clusters of turbines, i.e., wind farms. This, combined with an already established collaboration within the consortium, makes WindSim a very suitable platform for development. This project will use experience from many years in the Nordic Consortium and utilize it in commercial software that could be used by the wind energy industry.