Abstract:
Prediction of wind turbine performance and loading due to wake interaction effects is an important feature of developing wind farm layouts. In this paper, an actuator line technique for Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) wake modelling was used in coupling a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) model of an atmospheric boundary layer and an aero-elastic turbine simulation. This coupling results in a transient turbine wake model with the ability to simulate multiple turbines operating with real-time control directives and wake interaction. The FAST aero-elastic code and a research LES code were chosen for this work. Coupling of the codes was implemented using a partitioned software framework capable of parallelised operation on distributed computing resources. Simulations were conducted under various flow conditions, starting with steady uniform flow, followed by the introduction of a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer and multiple turbine instances. Preliminary solutions exhibit the action of the controller and the actuator line technique. Solutions modelling two turbines were used to investigate wake interaction effects.