Assessing The Impact Of Forests On Local Wind Conditions In Archipelagos: A CFD Study

Abstract

Ship fairways in archipelagos pass close to small islands with complex terrain and forests. In such areas, local wind conditions deviate from regional forecasts, creating a complex and challenging environment when navigating large vessels. In this article, we carried out Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations for wind flows over a site in the Turku Archipelago, in Finland. We assessed local wind conditions along the fairway with the intent of improving safe passage for large vessels. All simulations were carried out with and without the surrounding forests to elucidate the role of forests in shaping the local wind and turbulence conditions over the site. Our results show that in some regions of the fairway, forests can lower the wind speed to one-third of the magnitude obtained by using terrain-only models. Moreover, turbulence can locally be increased six-fold. We expect that these results will facilitate the development of new smart fairways for ensuring safe navigation through the archipelago in the future.

Impact of Forest Density on Atmospheric Boundary Layer Flow and Turbulence for Wind Energy Applications

“…Previous studies (Kelly et al 2014;Nebenführ and Davidson 2014;Chaudhari et al 2016a;Agafonova et al 2016a,b;Chaudhari et al 2023) reveal that the wind profile over forests is characterized by an increased mean wind shear (up to 200%) and turbulence intensity (up to 100%) at typical turbine hub height compared to that from a flat terrain or water surface. In particular, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards specify the limit values of wind shear and turbulence intensity that are incompatible with the conditions typically found above forests (Nebenführ and Davidson 2014;Chaudhari et al 2016a;Agafonova et al 2016b;Bergström et al 2013), which in turn is related to higher power losses as well as aerodynamic fatigue loads, causing reduced lifetime and increased maintenance costs (Nebenführ and Davidson 2015).…”

“…The influence of forests on the local Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) has been investigated by many researchers both numerically as well as experimentally. For example, the numerical studies, using either the Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) or Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) modelling approaches, include but are not limited to Finnigan et al (2009); Sogachev (2009); Sogachev et al (2009Sogachev et al ( , 2012; Nebenführ and Davidson (2014); Boudreault et al (2014); Nebenführ and Davidson (2015); Patton et al (2016); Agafonova et al (2016a,b); Chaudhari et al (2016a); Sogachev and Kelly (2016a); Sogachev et al (2017); Boudreault et al (2017); Nebenführ and Davidson (2017); Desmond et al (2018); Ivanell et al (2018); Adedipe et al (2020); Rodrigo et al (2020); Abedi et al (2021); Sogachev (2021); Cheng et al (2021); Adedipe et al (2022); Chaudhari et al (2023), and Li et al (2023). Additionally, on this topic, several experimental studies have been also carried out (Rannik et al 2003;Pedersen and Langreder 2007;Odemark and Segalini 2014;Desmond and Watson 2014;Dellwik et al 2014;Conan et al 2015;Arnqvist et al 2015;Giometto et al 2017;Kazda et al 2017;Cheng et al 2021;Mo et al 2022).…”

Navigating the Future: Developing Smart Fairways for Enhanced Maritime Safety and Efficiency

“…There are only a few articles mentioning 'Smart Fairways' [7,[21][22][23][24][25][26] or 'intelligent fairways' [7,[27][28][29][30][31]. While these studies explore various aspects related to fairways, they do not provide a precise definition of a 'Smart Fairway'.…”

“…These studies, instead, focus on different topics. These include risk management for smart shipping services [29,31]; network connectivity for communications ranging from low-priority entertainment to highpriority safety critical [22,[32][33][34]; simulation of local wind conditions [23]; platforms [7]; and data-driven decision making in maritime transport and logistics [24]. They also analyze and develop methods for safeguarding systems against cyber threats [21,25,26,28].…”