A novel Generation Zone approach for Cost-Effective Actuator Line aeroelastic analyses of Turbulent Wake Interactions and Loads in Wind Farm arrangements

The present work aims to numerically reproduce turbulent atmospheric fields within a CFD context in order to investigate the performance and loading of a wind farm. High fidelity aeroelastic LES simulations with turbulent inflow are performed for a subset of a wind farm consisting of three IEA 15 MW wind turbines aligned in a row and spaced 5 rotor diameters apart. Simulations are performed for two wind directions, one axial inflow and one with 30 degrees yaw. High–fidelity in–house tools are employed, CFD code MaPFlow coupled with the elastic solver hGAST. The Actuator Line Method is used to simulate the wind turbine rotors, while a new approach is used to introduce turbulent inflow. The results provide insights on the way turbulence structures interact with rotor disks and on the loading of downwind turbines due to rotor–wake interaction.