Model wind turbine performance in turbulent–non-turbulent boundary layer flow

Abstract

With increasing distance from the coast and greater hub heights, wind turbines expand into unknown, hardly researched environmental conditions. As height increases, laminar flow conditions become more likely. With the simultaneous increase in rotor diameter, very different flow conditions, from laminar to turbulent, occur over the rotor area. It is crucial to understand the effects of these different flow conditions on wind turbines. We approach this through wind tunnel experiments, presenting a setup with two different active grids. This setup enables the generation of four different flows – homogeneous, shear, turbulent–non-turbulent, and turbulent–non-turbulent shear flow – each with four different turbulence levels. The turbulent–non-turbulent flows exhibit a turbulence intensity gradient between the quasi-laminar flow at the upper and turbulent flow at the lower rotor half, establishing a turbulent–non-turbulent interface between the two rotor halves. In a second step, we investigate the Model Wind Turbine Oldenburg with a rotor diameter of 1.8 m (MoWiTO 1.8) under these conditions and analyze their effects on power output and blade loads. While the power fluctuations depend directly on the turbulence intensity, an additional turbulence intensity gradient shows no significant effect. A stronger effect can be observed for the blade root bending moments, the fluctuations of which increase with shear and also in turbulent–non-turbulent flow.