INVESTIGATION OF WAKE INTERACTION BETWEEN WIND TURBINES IN TANDEM

In this paper, a generalized actuator disk method combined with a three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation solver is used to obtain the flow fields about wind turbines, in which the body forces are used in place of the blades of the wind turbine. The numerous meshes and the huge computational resource can be avoided in resolving the blade boundary layers, and more meshes and computational resources can be used to simulate the wind turbine wake flow field. Therefore, the generalized actuator disk method is suitable for the study of the wind turbine wake. Computational results for the wind turbine NH1500 obtained by the generalized actuator disk method and the common CFD (computational fluid dynamics) method are compared in the load distribution on the blade, validating the effectiveness and efficiency of the generalized actuator disk method. The generalized actuator disk method is then performed for two wind turbines in tandem to investigate the interaction of the wake created by the front wind turbine on the downstream wind turbine performance in various distances between the two wind turbines.