Guidelines for Volume Force Distributions Within Actuator Line Modeling of Wind Turbines on Large-Eddy Simulation-Type Grids

Journal Article · Fri Jan 10 04:00:00 EST 2014 · Journal of Solar Energy Engineering

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4026252· OSTI ID:1122303

Jha, Pankaj K.; Churchfield, Matthew J.; Moriarty, Patrick J.; Schmitz, Sven

The objective of this work is to develop and test a set of general guidelines for choosing parameters to be used in the state-of-the-art actuator line method (ALM) for modeling wind turbine blades in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The actuator line method is being increasingly used for the computation of wake interactions in large wind farms in which fully blade-resolving simulations are expensive and require complicated rotating meshes. The focus is on actuator line behavior using fairly isotropic grids of low aspect ratio typically used for large-eddy simulation (LES). Forces predicted along the actuator lines need to be projected onto the flow field as body forces, and this is commonly accomplished using a volumetric projection. In this study, particular attention is given to the spanwise distribution of the radius of this projection. A new method is proposed where the projection radius varies along the blade span following an elliptic distribution. The proposed guidelines for actuator line parameters are applied to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Phase VI rotor and the NREL 5-MW turbine. Results obtained are compared with available data and the blade-element code XTurb-PSU. It is found that the new criterion for the projection radius leads to improved prediction of blade tip loads for both blade designs.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Wind and Water Technologies Office (EE-4W)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1122303
• Journal Information: Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Journal Name: Journal of Solar Energy Engineering Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 136; ISSN 0199-6231
• Publisher: ASME
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY
Wind Energy