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Multirotor wind turbine wakes

Bastankhah, Majid; Abkar, Mahdi

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Authors

Mahdi Abkar



Abstract

To fulfill the increasing need for large power generation by wind turbines, the concept of multirotor wind turbines has recently received attention as a promising alternative to conventional massive single-rotor wind turbines. To shed light on the viability of this concept, large-eddy simulation is employed in this study to compare wake flow properties of a multirotor wind turbine with those of a single-rotor turbine. The wake of a multirotor turbine is found to recover faster at short downwind distances, where the whole wake is characterized as an array of localized high velocity-deficit regions associated with each rotor. However, as the wake moves downstream, rotor wakes start interacting with each other until they eventually form a single wake. This transition from a wake array to a single wake adversely affects the initial fast recovery of multirotor turbine wakes. A budget analysis of mean kinetic energy is performed to analyze the energy transport into the wake before and after this transition. In addition, the effect of different geometrical configurations on wake characteristics of a multirotor turbine was examined. We found that the recovery rate of multirotor turbine wakes is enhanced by the increase in rotor spacing, whereas the number and rotation direction of rotors do not play a significant role in the wake recovery. A simple analytical relationship is also developed to predict the streamwise distance at which the transition from a wake array to a single wake occurs for multirotor wind turbines.

Citation

Bastankhah, M., & Abkar, M. (2019). Multirotor wind turbine wakes. Physics of Fluids, 31(8), Article 085106. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5097285

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 11, 2019
Online Publication Date Aug 6, 2019
Publication Date Aug 31, 2019
Deposit Date Aug 7, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Physics of Fluids
Print ISSN 1070-6631
Electronic ISSN 1089-7666
Publisher American Institute of Physics
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 31
Issue 8
Article Number 085106
DOI https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5097285

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Copyright Statement
© 2019 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Bastankhah, Majid & Abkar, Mahdi (2019). Multirotor wind turbine wakes. Physics of Fluids 31(8): 085106 and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5097285





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