3D-simulation of the turbulent wake behind a wind turbine

The paper relates to the simulation of the airflow around a wind turbine (WT) of the type ENERCON E66 with emphasis on the turbulent wake. The simulations were undertaken with the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS FLUENT 6.3 using the LES technique for turbulence modeling. It is the aim of the work to capture the full three-dimensional turbulent flow behind a WT in a sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to generate information for wind loads of WTs in wind farm configuration. This information shall help to optimize wind farm layouts in the future. Using an incoming wind field that matches the requirements of the IEC-61400 for wind fields used in load calculations it was possible to simulate a full meandering turbulent wake. The turbulent features of the WT wake could be reproduced with numerical methods not using further assumptions but solely based on the WT geometry and the solution of the governing physical equations. The project is supported by ENERCON GmbH, Germany.