About the suitability of different numerical methods to reproduce model wind turbine measurements in a wind tunnel with a high blockage ratio

摘要

In the present paper, numerical and experimental investigations of a modelwind turbine with a diameter of 3.0 m are described. The study hasthree objectives. The first one is the provision of validation data. Thesecond one is to estimate the influence of the wind tunnel walls by comparingmeasurements to simulated results with and without wind tunnel walls. Thelast objective is the comparison and evaluation of methods of high fidelity,namely computational fluid dynamics, and medium fidelity, namely lifting-linefree vortex wake. The experiments were carried out in the large wind tunnelof the TU Berlin where a blockage ratio of 40 % occurs. With the lifting-line free vortex wake code QBlade, the turbine was simulated under farfield conditions at the TU Berlin. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokessimulations of the wind turbine, including wind tunnel walls and under farfield conditions, were performed at the University of Stuttgart with thecomputational fluid dynamics code FLOWer.Comparisons among the experiment, the lifting-line free vortex wake code andthe computational fluid dynamics code include on-blade velocity and angle ofattack. Comparisons of flow fields are drawn between the experiment and thecomputational fluid dynamics code. Bending moments are compared among thesimulations.A good accordance was achieved for the on-blade velocity and the angle ofattack, whereas deviations occur for the flow fields and the bending moments.