Scale-resolving simulations of atmosphere / wind farm interactions

由于发电成本的稳步下降，海上风能正在经历巨大的增长，现在人们承认，这将是实现2050年净零目标的关键。成本降低的很大一部分来自于使用超大型涡轮机。更大的转子有望进一步提高效率，但这种巨型风力涡轮机的高效设计和运行带来了一些根本性的工程挑战。目前的涡轮分离和运行设计规则(与转子直径成比例)将需要重新考虑，这需要更好地理解不同大气条件、运动和变形的转子及其尾迹之间的动态相互作用。这种调查需要通过计算机模拟进行，使用既能解决农场规模的湍流大气条件，又能解决其在旋翼水平上的局部动力效应的模型。在EPSRC/NERC最近资助的一个项目中，我们已经建立了这样的模拟框架(1)，并证明了它适用于在超大型计算架构上进行大规模模拟。尾流转向是涡轮机与来流的受控不对齐，以修正它们对尾流对下游涡轮机的影响。小规模风电场(2)表明，这种合作策略在电力生产方面具有有利的整体优势，但在尾流物理、它们与大气条件(例如，湿度和温度)的依赖性以及它们与转子的相互作用方面，对于在新的风电场开发中采用这种有前景的技术，仍有许多未知之处。这将在这个项目中解决，它将对大气条件、转子偏航策略和叶片上的预期功率输出和动态负载之间的独立性进行系统的调查。这些信息将为叶片/变速箱疲劳模型提供信息，以评估功率输出增加和运行寿命缩短之间的潜在权衡。该项目已被定义为与上交所可再生能源公司作为工业合作伙伴的案例博士研究生。SSE可再生能源将接待学生，并参与问题的定义和结果的评估。通过与上交所可再生能源公司合作开展这一项目，我们可以研究上交所可再生能源公司管理的大型风电场在不同大气条件下的各种偏航策略。

Offshore wind energy is seeing huge growth thanks to a steady reduction in the cost of power generation and it is now acknowledged that it will be critical for the 2050 net zero target. A large proportion of cost reduction is derived from using very large turbines. Further efficiency gains are expected from even larger rotors, but efficient design and operation of such colossal wind turbines poses some fundamental engineering challenges. Current design rules for turbine separation and operation (which scale with the rotor diameter) will need to be revisited, which calls for a better understanding of the dynamic interactions between different atmospheric conditions, the moving and deforming rotors, and their wakes. Such investigation needs to be performed through computer simulation, using models that resolve both the turbulent atmospheric conditions at farm scale, and their local dynamic effects at the rotor level. On a recent EPSRC/NERC funded project, we have built such simulation framework (1) and demonstrated its suitability to farm scale simulations on very large computing architectures.Wake steering is the controlled misalignment of the turbines with the incoming flow to modify the impact on their wakes on downstream turbines. It has been shown in small scale farms (2) that this cooperative strategy can have a beneficial overall advantage in power production, but much is still unknown in terms of both wake physics, their dependency with atmospheric conditions (e.g., humidity and temperature) and their interactions with rotors, for the adoption of such promising technology in new wind farm developments. This will be addressed in this project, which will carry out a systematic investigation of the independencies between atmospheric conditions, rotor yawing strategies, and the expected power output and dynamic loading on the blades. This information will inform blade/gearbox fatigue models to assess potential trade-offs between power output gains and reduction of operational life. The project has been defined as a CASE PhD studentship with SSE Renewables as an industrial partner. SSE Renewables will host the student and participate in the definition of the problem and the assessment of the results. The collaboration with SSE Renewables for this project will allow us to investigate various rotor yawing strategies under different atmospheric conditions for large-scale wind farms managed by SSE Renewables.