Wind Tunnel Experiments for the Wake Effect on the Performance of Tandem Wind Turbines

doi:10.3901/JME.2022.12.237

Abstract

Abstract: The number of wind turbines in a single wind farm has gradually increased, and the wake disturbance among wind turbines has become an important influencing factor for optimizing the layout of wind farms. Therefore, wind tunnel experiments were designed, focusing on the influence of wake disturbance on the performance of the downstream wind turbine. Firstly, a Cobra probe was used to measure the velocity of a single wind turbine and calculate the loss and turbulence parameters. The results show that the wake velocity loss of a single wind turbine is approximately in the form of the Gaussian function, and the loss decreases along the downstream. Turbulence of wind turbine is mainly distributed in the center of wake and boundary layer. In power spectral density analysis, the wake frequency in the near wake area shows obvious 3p periodicity, while near the blade tip it shows obvious n×p periodicity. Subsequently, taking two model turbines in the tandem arrangement into account, the experiments studied the influence of the wake flow under different working conditions. The results show that the electric power of downstream wind turbine can be improved by increasing space between wind turbines, increasing turbulence of inflow and the yawing of upstream wind turbines. In addition, downstream steering has no significant effect on power characteristics. Finally, the influence of turbulence intensity on wake velocity recovery is studied. The results show that the wake velocity recovery of turbulent inflow is faster than that of uniform inflow. In the micro-layout of a real wind farm, the rotor equivalent wind speed can be calculated to evaluate the power characteristics of wind turbine and determine the arrangement of wind turbine location.

Key words: wind turbines, wind tunnel experiment, wake effect, tandem arrangement

CLC Number:

TM315

WANG Zedong, HAO Junbo, YI Wenwu, CHEN Yan, HUANG Zhihong. Wind Tunnel Experiments for the Wake Effect on the Performance of Tandem Wind Turbines[J]. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2022, 58(12): 237-249.

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