Entrainment models of turbine wakes, wind farms, and flow adjustment in canopies

Abstract eng:
In this conference presentation, we build on the turbulent entrainment hypothesis to develop models for flow past individual wind turbines, large wind farms, and other canopy flows. The entrainment hypothesis consists of a concise turbulence model, which has been widely used in geophysical fluid mechanics. We develop models for the wake of a single wind turbine, as well as for fully-developed flow in a large wind farm, inclusive of atmospheric stratification. We next consider flow adjustment at the front of a canopy, which may be rigid (for wind farms) or flexible (for vegetation). The resulting theories, based on this general turbulence model, agree with field and laboratory measurements without the need for introducing flow-specific parameters. Finally, this framework can be used to yield a limit for the output of large wind farms, which we find to be an order of magnitude larger than the performance of current designs.

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