IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v5y2014i1d10.1038_ncomms5216.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Natural snowfall reveals large-scale flow structures in the wake of a 2.5-MW wind turbine

Author

Listed:
  • Jiarong Hong

    (Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
    University of Minnesota)

  • Mostafa Toloui

    (Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
    University of Minnesota)

  • Leonardo P. Chamorro

    (Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

  • Michele Guala

    (Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
    University of Minnesota)

  • Kevin Howard

    (Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
    University of Minnesota)

  • Sean Riley

    (University of Minnesota)

  • James Tucker

    (Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory)

  • Fotis Sotiropoulos

    (Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
    University of Minnesota)

Abstract

To improve power production and structural reliability of wind turbines, there is a pressing need to understand how turbines interact with the atmospheric boundary layer. However, experimental techniques capable of quantifying or even qualitatively visualizing the large-scale turbulent flow structures around full-scale turbines do not exist today. Here we use snowflakes from a winter snowstorm as flow tracers to obtain velocity fields downwind of a 2.5-MW wind turbine in a sampling area of ~\n36 × 36 m2. The spatial and temporal resolutions of the measurements are sufficiently high to quantify the evolution of blade-generated coherent motions, such as the tip and trailing sheet vortices, identify their instability mechanisms and correlate them with turbine operation, control and performance. Our experiment provides an unprecedented in situ characterization of flow structures around utility-scale turbines, and yields significant insights into the Reynolds number similarity issues presented in wind energy applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiarong Hong & Mostafa Toloui & Leonardo P. Chamorro & Michele Guala & Kevin Howard & Sean Riley & James Tucker & Fotis Sotiropoulos, 2014. "Natural snowfall reveals large-scale flow structures in the wake of a 2.5-MW wind turbine," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 5(1), pages 1-9, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5216
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5216
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5216
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms5216?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rivera-Arreba, Irene & Li, Zhaobin & Yang, Xiaolei & Bachynski-Polić, Erin E., 2024. "Comparison of the dynamic wake meandering model against large eddy simulation for horizontal and vertical steering of wind turbine wakes," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    2. Dong, Guodan & Li, Zhaobin & Qin, Jianhua & Yang, Xiaolei, 2022. "Predictive capability of actuator disk models for wakes of different wind turbine designs," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 269-281.
    3. El Fajri, Oumnia & Bowman, Joshua & Bhushan, Shanti & Thompson, David & O'Doherty, Tim, 2022. "Numerical study of the effect of tip-speed ratio on hydrokinetic turbine wake recovery," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 725-750.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5216. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.