Numerical analysis of NREL 5MW wind turbine: a study towards a better understanding of wake characteristic and torque generation mechanism

With the increased feasibility of harvesting offshore wind energy, scale of wind turbines is growing rapidly and there is a trend towards clustering together higher number of turbines in order to harvest maximum yield and to leave a smaller footprint on the environment. This causes complex flow configurations inside the farms, the study of which is essential to making offshore wind energy a success. The present study focuses on NREL 5MW wind turbine with the following objectives (a)To compare Sliding Mesh Interface and Multiple Reference Frame modeling approaches and their predictive capabilities in reproducing the characteristics of flow around the full scale wind turbine. (b)To get a better insight into wake dynamics behind the turbine in near and far wake regions operating under different tip-speed-ratio and incoming turbulence intensities.