Unsteady aerodynamic modelling of horizontal axis wind turbine performance

Wang, Tongguang (1999) Unsteady aerodynamic modelling of horizontal axis wind turbine performance. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The present work presents a study of unsteady aerodynamic modelling of horizontal axis wind turbine performance. The unsteady aspects addressed in this work include effects of variations in turbine inflow velocity due to operation in yawed flow, in the atmospheric boundary layer, in a wind tunnel, and due to the tower wake. In each case, the basis for the analysis is a prescribed wake vortex model, the development and enhancement of which has been the main focus of the work.

A high resolution model has been developed to meet the requirement for adequate representation of the tower shadow effects. A near wake dynamic model has been enhanced with appropriate modifications and integrated into the prescribed wake scheme to produce a hybrid method capable of predicting the detailed high resolution unsteady response in the tower shadow region. The azimuthal interval used within the shadow region can be reduced to 0.5° whilst the computational cost introduced by the high resolution near wake model is almost negligible.

A low order source panel method and the prescribed wake model have been combined into a coupled scheme capable of assessing the basic effect of wind tunnel walls on wind turbine flow and performance. The wind tunnel walls are discretised into a series of panels on which source singularities are placed. The source strengths are related to the turbine bound and wake vorticities via their induced velocities. The geometry of the turbine wake is obtained by superposition of the contribution of the disturbance velocities due to the source panels upon the prescribed wake. This new wake structure modifies the wind turbine aerodynamic performance in turn.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering
• Supervisor's Name: Coton, Dr. Frank N.
• Date of Award: 1999
• Depositing User: Angi Shields
• Unique ID: glathesis:1999-4039
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 26 Feb 2013 12:39
• Last Modified: 26 Feb 2013 12:39
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/4039