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research article

Effect of aspect ratio on vertical-axis wind turbine wakes

Shamsoddin, Sina  
•
Porte-Agel, Fernando  
April 25, 2020
Journal of Fluid Mechanics

Variability of the rotor aspect ratio is one of the inherent characteristics of vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) which differentiates them especially from the more conventional horizontal-axis wind turbines. In this study, we intend to investigate the effect of rotor aspect ratio on VAWT wakes. In particular, we aim to find out whether a common behaviour exists in the mean flow field of such wakes. In order to do so, we first design and perform a set of numerical experiments (using our already validated large-eddy simulation framework) to obtain the mean flow field of the wakes of three VAWTs of different aspect ratio (2, 1 and ) and the same thrust coefficient (). After observing the obvious differences in these three wakes, by using the classical momentum integral and the concept of momentum diameter, we come up with an appropriate normalization length scale , where is the rotor diameter and is the rotor height. By normalizing the lengths (both streamwise and lateral) involved in the mean velocity profiles by , we obtain a remarkable collapse of the wake profiles for the three aspect ratios. As a corollary, cross-sections of wakes of turbines with different aspect ratios eventually converge to a circular shape - not an elliptical one, for example, as one might presume intuitively. This result influences the modelling of VAWT far wakes and, in turn, has implications on the optimal configuration of VAWT farms.

  • Details
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Type
research article
DOI
10.1017/jfm.2020.93
Web of Science ID

WOS:000514682600001

Author(s)
Shamsoddin, Sina  
Porte-Agel, Fernando  
Date Issued

2020-04-25

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published in
Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Volume

889

Start page

R1

Subjects

Mechanics

•

Physics, Fluids & Plasmas

•

Physics

•

wakes

•

turbulent flows

•

general fluid mechanics

•

memory

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
WIRE  
Available on Infoscience
March 6, 2020
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/167065
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