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At least 289 records · Page 16

Wind farm structural response and wake dynamics for an evolving stable boundary layer: computational and experimental comparisons

Abstract. The wind turbine design process requires performing thousands of simulations for a wide range of inflow and control conditions, which necessitates computationally efficient yet time-accurate models, especially when considering wind farm settings. To this end, FAST.Farm is a dynamic-wake-meandering-based mid-fidelity engineering tool developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory targeted at accurately and efficiently predicting wind turbine power production and structural loading in wind farm settings, including wake interactions between turbines. This work is an extension of a study that addressed constructing a diurnal cycle evolution based on experimental data (Quon, 2024). Here, this inflow is used to validate the turbine structural and wake-meandering response between experimental data, FAST.Farm simulation results, and high-fidelity large-eddy simulation results from the coupled Simulator fOr Wind Farm Applications (SOWFA)–OpenFAST tool. The validation occurs within the nocturnal stable boundary layer when corresponding meteorological and turbine data are available. To this end, we compared the load results from FAST.Farm and SOWFA–OpenFAST to multi-turbine measurements from a subset of a full-scale wind farm. Computational predictions of blade-root and tower-base bending loads are compared to 10 min statistics of strain gauge measurements during 3.5 h of the evolving stable boundary layer, generally with good agreement. This time period coincided with an active wake-steering campaign of an upstream turbine, resulting in time-varying yaw positions of all turbines. Wake meandering was also compared between the computational solutions, generally with excellent agreement. Simulations were based on a high-fidelity precursor constructed from inflow measurements and using state-of-the-art mesoscale-to-microscale coupling.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Effect of ground and ceiling planes on shape of energized wakes

Results are presented from an investigation of the structure of energized wakes in the presence of ground or ceiling planes when powered-lift devices are tested at zero and low wind tunnel velocities. Solutions are presented to indicate how the presence of a nearby ground plane causes the energized wake to constrict less than when in free space. In contrast, another set of solutions indicate that the presence of a ceiling plane enhances wake construction so that the wake width is even smaller than when in free space. Hence, a ground plane tends to reduce the chance for interaction between the wake and the energizing elements, while a nearby ceiling plane tends to increase the likelihood for interference.

TRT-EXPERIMENTAL↗

Vortex Shedding Characteristics of the Wake of a Thin Flat Plate with a Circular Trailing Edge

The near and very near wake of a thin flat plate with a circular trailing edge are investigated with direct numerical simulations (DNS). Data obtained for two different Reynolds numbers (based on plate thickness, D) are the main focus of this study. The separating boundary layers are turbulent in both cases. An earlier investigation of one of the cases (Case F) showed shed vortices in the wake that were about 1.0 D to 4.0 D in spanwise length. Considerable variation in both the strength and frequency of these shed vortices was observed. One objective of the present investigation is to determine the important contributors to this variability in strength and frequency of shed vortices and their finite spanwise extent. Analysis of the data shows that streamwise vortices in the separating boundary layer play an important role in strengthening/weakening of the shed vortices and that high/low-speed streaks in the boundary layer are important contributors to variability in shedding frequency. Both these features of the boundary layer contribute to the finite extent of the vortices in the spanwise direction. The second plate DNS (Case G, with 40 percent of the plate thickness of Case F) shows that while shedding intensity is weaker than obtained in Case F, many of the wake features are similar to that of Case F. This is important in understanding the path to the wake of the thin plate with a sharp trailing edge where shedding is absent. Here we also test the efficacy of a functional relationship between the shedding frequency and the Reynolds numbers based on the boundary layer momentum thickness (Re (sub theta) and D (Re (sub D)); data for developing this behavioral model is from Cases F & G and five earlier DNSs of the flat plate wake.

Turbulent wakes↗

Experimental Measurements of Passenger Ride Quality During Aircraft Wake Surfing

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Armstrong Flight Research Center completed a series of research flights to better understand the challenges of aircraft wake surfing using civilian airplanes and commercial avionics. Airlines and air cargo carriers have identified uncertainty about increased passenger/crew discomfort due to noise and vibrations as a potential obstacle to the widespread adoption of aircraft wake surfing. To measure the effects of wake surfing on passenger ride quality, NASA instrumented a business jet with cabin noise and vibration sensors. The airplane was then flown under control of an experimental autopilot at multiple locations within the wake of a similar airplane. This paper presents a summary of the measurements collected on those flights, an assessment of passenger discomfort correlated with wake surfing performance benefits, and qualitative evaluations collected from passengers aboard during the research flights.

wake surfing↗

Wake Disturbance-Based Separation Evaluation for Urban Air Mobility Aircraft

This paper builds upon previous research to evaluate Urban Air Mobility (UAM) flight dynamics in the presence of wake disturbances. A model for fixed-wing-generated wake effects is applied to a Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology (RVLT) Lift+Cruise UAM trail aircraft operating in the fixed-wing Cruise configuration. The wake effects are evaluated at various longitudinal and latitudinal separation configurations to determine the most hazardous wake encounter situation. Trim calculations and closed-loop simulations show a trailing aircraft flying directly into a wake vortex as the most hazardous scenario. Furthermore, trailing behind a larger aircraft at similar speeds greatly increases the safe separation distance. These considerations indicate a need for dynamic pairwise separation criteria to enable dense Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations while maintaining safety.

Urban Air Mobility↗

Demonstration of Wake Steering Through Yaw Control in a Wind Plant Field Experiment: Cooperative Research and Development Final Report, CRADA Number CRD-16-00629

Over the last few decades, wind energy has evolved into a large international industry involving major players in the manufacturing, construction, and utility sectors. Coinciding with the industry’s growth, significant innovation in the technology has resulted in larger turbines with lower associated costs of energy and more complex designs in all subsystems. However, as the deployment of the technology has grown and its role within the electricity sector become more prominent, so have the expectations of the technology in terms of performance, reliability, and cost. The industry currently partitions its efforts into separate paths for turbine design, plant design and development, finance, grid interaction and operation, mitigation of adverse community and environmental impacts, and other areas. One prominent area where this partition is evident is in wind turbine control. Traditionally, each wind turbine in a wind plant has been controlled separately – via its own internal controller using only its own sensors. However, wind turbines in a plant interact with each other through the plant-level fluid dynamics. Wake losses (due to upstream turbines extracting energy from the winds and “waking” downstream turbines) can be up to 10% or even 20% of the gross energy production (if each turbine experienced the free stream wind inflow to the plant). A series of studies and experiments have demonstrated that there is potential for improving energy output at existing plants through plant control methods which seek to optimize total wind plant energy production over the current “greedy” approach where each turbine maximizes its own production. Wake steering induced by yaw offsets (turning the turbine to be out of the plane perpendicular to wind inflow) for upstream turbines has shown significant promise in simulations and wind tunnel experiments. In simulation studies, annual energy production has been shown to increase by 2% or more depending on the particular aspects of the wind plant (turbine spacing, meteorological conditions, etc). This project seeks to demonstrate the potential of plant-level controls via wake steering at a commercial wind plant. This is an important step towards commercialization and industry adoption of this plant-level modeling and analysis capability.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Imaging the wakes of jets with energy-energy-energy correlators

As the partons in a high energy jet propagate through the droplet of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in a heavy-ion collision they lose energy to, kick, and are kicked by the medium. The resulting modifications to the parton shower encode information about the microscopic nature of QGP. A direct consequence, however, is that the momentum and energy lost by the parton shower are gained by the medium and, since QGP is a strongly coupled liquid, this means that the jet excites a wake in the droplet of QGP. After freezeout, this wake becomes soft hadrons with net momentum in the jet direction meaning that what an experimentalist later reconstructs as a jet includes hadrons originating from both the modified parton shower and its wake. This has made it challenging to find experimental observables that provide an unambiguous view of the dynamical response of a droplet of QGP to a jet shooting through it. Recent years have seen significant substantial advances in the theoretical and experimental understanding of the substructure of jets, in particular, using correlation functions, $\langle$ ($\vec{n}$ 1 )•••$\mathcal{E}$($\vec{n}$ k ) $\rangle$, of the energy flux operator in proton-proton collisions and, recently, in heavy-ion collisions. So far, such studies have focused primarily on the two-point correlator, which allows for the identification of the angular scale of the underlying dynamics. Higher-point correlators hold the promise of mapping out the dynamics themselves. In this paper we perform the first study of the shape-dependent three-point energy-energy-energy correlator in heavy-ion collisions. Using the Hybrid Model to simulate the interactions of high energy jets with the QGP medium, we show that the three-point correlator presents us with a striking new opportunity. We find that hadrons originating from wakes are the dominant contribution to the three-point correlator in the kinematic regime in which the three points are well-separated in angle, forming a roughly equilateral triangle. This equilateral region of the correlator is far from the region populated by collinear vacuum emissions, making it a canvas on which jet wakes are laid out, where experimentalists can map their shapes. Our work provides a key step towards the systematic use of energy correlators to image and unravel the dynamical response of a droplet of QGP that has been probed by a passing jet, and motivates numerous experimental and theoretical studies.

Jets and Jet Substructure↗

Wake-up and fatigue mechanisms in ferroelectric Hf 0.5 Zr 0.5 O 2 films with symmetric RuO 2 electrodes

In this work, the mechanisms leading to wake-up and fatigue in ferroelectric hafnium zirconium oxide thin film devices with symmetric RuO 2 electrodes are investigated via polarization, relative permittivity, dielectric nonlinearity, pyroelectric coefficient, and microfocus X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. The devices are observed to wake-up for up to 10 3 bipolar pulsed field cycles, after which fatigue occurs with the polarization approaching zero following 10 8 cycles. Wake-up is accompanied by a decrease in both high-field permittivity and hysteresis loop pinching and an increase in pyroelectric coefficient, indicating that the wake-up process involves a combination of transformations from the tetragonal to the orthorhombic phase and domain depinning from defect redistribution. Fatigue is observed to coincide with an increase in irreversible domain wall motion and a decrease in pyroelectric coefficient. Finite pyroelectric coefficients are measured on fully fatigued devices, indicating that domain pinning is a strong contributor to fatigue and that fatigued devices contain domain structures that are unable to switch under the fields applied for measurement. Microfocus XRD patterns measured on each device reveal that the phase constitution is qualitatively unaffected by the field cycling and resultant polarization fatigue. This data indicates that the wake-up process has contributions from both phase transformations and domain depinning, whereas the fatigue process is driven primarily by domain pinning, and the near-zero measured switchable polarization is actually a poled device with immobile domains. These observations provide insight into the physical changes occurring during field cycling of HfO 2 -based ferroelectrics while examining a possible oxide electrode material for silicon CMOS device implementation.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Modification of wind turbine wakes by large-scale, convective atmospheric boundary layer structures

In this study, we consider the impact of large-scale, convective structures in an unstable atmospheric boundary layer on wind turbine wakes. Simulation data from a high-fidelity large-eddy simulation (LES) of the AWAKEN wind farm site matching unstable atmospheric conditions were analyzed, and both turbine performance and wake behavior were affected based on their location relative to the convective structures. Turbines located in updraft regions of the flow experienced lower inflow velocity and generated less power, but their wakes were observed to recover faster and saw greater turbulent kinetic energy mixing higher in the boundary layer. The opposite effect was found for turbines in the downdraft regions of the convective structures. A simplified model of this wake behavior was also developed based on a two-dimensional k–ε Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes formulation. This simplified model included the effects of vertical transport, but could be efficiently solved as a parabolic system, and was found to capture similar wake modifications observed in the high-fidelity LES computations.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗

Effect of optical field ionisation on the generation of wake fields by femtosecond laser pulses in an inhomogeneous plasma

We consider the interaction of a high-intensity short laser pulse with an argon gas during optical field ionisation. Modelling in a three-dimensional cylindrical symmetric geometry is performed at various moderately relativistic intensities and positions of the focal plane of the laser beam in the case of both optical gas ionisation and a pre-ionised plasma. The influence of the processes occurring during optical field ionisation of the gas on the generation of wake waves is investigated, and the conditions are found under which intense wake fields are produced in a plasma formed from an inhomogeneous argon gas jet. The possibility of using a gas with a large number of electrons on the outer shell (argon) to excite intense wake waves and accelerate electrons is demonstrated. Despite significant ionisation refraction of the laser pulse on a radially inhomogeneous density profile of plasma electrons formed during optical field ionisation, the region of the parameters of the laser pulse and the gas target is determined at which ionisation refraction leads to the excitation of an intense wake wave. It is found that in a pre-ionised plasma a wake wave is not generated even at the same laser radiation intensity. (paper)

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Long-range Doppler lidar measurements of wind turbine wakes and their interaction with turbulent atmospheric boundary-layer flow at Perdigao 2017

As part of the Perdigão 2017 campaign, vertical RHI (range-height indicator) scans with long-range pulsed Doppler wind lidars were performed aligned with the main wind direction and a wind turbine (WT) located on a mountain ridge. The measurements are used to not only retrieve flow velocities, but also their variance and - by using the turbulent broadening of the Doppler spectrum - also turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation rate. The study shows that turbulence in the WT wake is dependent on the turbulence of the inflow, but also on atmospheric stability. In stable atmospheric conditions, wakes could be analyzed up to five rotor diameters downstream (D) and showed the maximum turbulence in the wake at 2-3 D, whereas in unstable conditions, the maximum was found at 2 D and the wake could not be detected further than 3 D. A clear dependency of wake turbulence enhancement on inflow turbulence intensity is found, which levels out to no further enhancement at turbulence intensities of 30%.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Downwind control of oceanic air by land: the land wake and its sensitivity to CO 2

Oceans are well-known to be directly altered by global climate forcings such as greenhouse gas changes, but how oceans are indirectly influenced by land and its response to such forcings remains less explored. Here, we assess the present-day and projected future state of a little-explored feature of the climate system—a 'land wake' in relative humidity downwind of the east coast of North America, consisting of low-humidity continental air extending roughly 1000 km over the Atlantic ocean. The wake exists throughout the year, but is supported by high continental temperatures in summer and low continental moisture in winter. The wake is well represented in an ensemble of global climate models (GCMs), qualitatively matching reanalysis data. Under increasing atmospheric CO 2 , the land wake intensifies in GCM simulations through two pathways: the radiative effects of CO 2 on surface temperatures, and the biogeochemical effect of CO 2 on terrestrial vegetation. Vegetation responses to increased CO 2 alter the summer wake from Florida to Newfoundland, and both the radiative and biogeochemical effects of CO 2 drive reductions in coastal cloud cover. These changes illustrate the potential of rapidly changing terrestrial climate to influence coastal regions and the ocean environment downwind of continents through both light conditions and the energy balance of the surface ocean.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Mapping the Planetary Wake in HD 163296 with Kinematics

Abstract We map the planetary wake associated with the embedded protoplanet creating the CO kink in the disk of HD 163296. We show that the wake can be traced by a series of correlated perturbations in the peak velocity map. The sign change of the perturbations across the disk’s major axis confirms that the wake induces predominantly radial motion, as predicted by models of planet–disk interaction. These results provide the first direct confirmation of planet wakes generated by Lindblad resonances. Mapping the wake provides a constraint on the disk aspect ratio, which is required to measure the mass of the planet.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Exploratory investigation of sound pressure level in the wake of an oscillating airfoil in the vicinity of stall

Wind tunnel tests were performed on two oscillating two-dimensional lifting surfaces. The first of these models had an NACA 0012 airfoil section while the second simulated the classical flat plate. Both of these models had a mean angle of attack of 12 degrees while being oscillated in pitch about their midchord with a double amplitude of 6 degrees. Wake surveys of sound pressure level were made over a frequency range from 16 to 32 Hz and at various free stream velocities up to 100 ft/sec. The sound pressure level spectrum indicated significant peaks in sound intensity at the oscillation frequency and its first harmonic near the wake of both models. From a comparison of these data with that of a sound level meter, it is concluded that most of the sound intensity is contained within these peaks and no appreciable peaks occur at higher harmonics. It is concluded that within the wake the sound intensity is largely pseudosound while at one chord length outside the wake, it is largely true vortex sound. For both the airfoil and flat plate the peaks appear to be more strongly dependent upon the airspeed than on the oscillation frequency. Therefore reduced frequency does not appear to be a significant parameter in the generation of wake sound intensity.

Gray, R. B.↗

Evaluation of experimental flow properties in the wake of a Viking '75 entry vehicle.

An experimental investigation has been conducted to obtain the flow properties in the wake of a model of the Viking '75 entry vehicle. Data are presented for the model at several angles of attack at free-stream Mach numbers from 0.2 to 3.95. The characteristics of the wake flow field are discussed and results are shown to demonstrate the significant variation of wake center-line flow properties in the transonic speed range, the shift in wake profiles with change in angle of attack, and the similarity exhibited by the velocity profiles across the wake.

Campbell, J. F.↗

Regularity in the control of the free-running sleep-wakefulness rhythm

In the present experiment, rigid control over the sleep and wake-up times was employed in an attempt to contain the natural rhythm to a 24-hr cycle. Eight subjects were isolated from all time and social cues for 10 days. They were placed on a rigid schedule of sleep between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. The results indicate that, for practical purposes, the free-running sleep-wakefulness rhythm can be contained to a 24-hr cycle by rigid control of the sleep portion of the cycle. When part of the control was released by allowing the subjects to sleep beyond 7 a.m., they slept an average of 67 min longer and showed sleep latencies which averaged 73 min. From these data it is concluded that control of the sleep portion of the sleep-wakefulness cycle, particularly control of the wake-up time, is sufficient to contain the free-running sleep-wakefulness rhythm to a 24-hr cycle.

Webb, W. B.↗

Wind tunnel measurements in the wake of a simple structure in a simulated atmospheric flow

Measurements of longitudinal mean velocity and turbulence intensity were made in the wake of a rectangular model building in a simulated atmospheric boundary-layer wind. The model building was a 1:50 scale model of a structure used in a wake measurement program at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center 8-tower boundary-layer facility. The approach wind profile and measurement locations were chosen to match the field site conditions. The wakes of the building in winds from azimuths of 0 and 47 degrees referenced to the normal to the building long axis were examined. The effect of two lines of trees upwind of the building on the wake and the importance of the ratio of the building height to boundary-layer thickness on the extent of the wake were determined.

Hansen, A. C.↗

Exploratory flight investigation of aircraft response to the wing vortex wake generated by the augmentor wing jet STOL research aircraft

A brief exploratory flight program was conducted at Ames Research Center to investigate the vortex wake hazard of a powered-lift STOL aircraft. The study was made by flying an instrumented Cessna 210 aircraft into the wake of the augmentor wing jet STOL research aircraft at separation distances from 1 to 4 n.mi. Characteristics of the wake were evaluated in terms of the magnitude of the upset of the probing aircraft. Results indicated that within 1 n.mi. separation the wake could cause rolling moments in excess of roll control power and yawing moments equivalent to rudder control power of the probe aircraft. Subjective evaluations by the pilots of the Cessna 210 aircraft, supported by response measurements, indicated that the upset caused by the wake of the STOL aircraft was comparable to that of a DC-9 in the landing configuration.

Jacobsen, R. A.↗