Implementation of a Mixing Length Turbulence Formulation Into the Dynamic Wake Meandering Model

The work presented in this paper focuses on improving the description of wake evolution due to turbulent mixing in the dynamic wake meandering (DWM) model. From wake investigations performed with high-fidelity actuator line simulations carried out in ELLIPSYS3D, it is seen that the current DWM description, where the eddy viscosity is assumed to be constant in each cross-section of the wake, is insufficient.

Instead, a two-dimensional eddy viscosity formulation is proposed to model the shear layer generated turbulence in the wake, based on the classical mixing length model. The performance of the modified DWM model is verified by comparing the mean wake velocity distribution with a set of ELLIPSYS3D actuator line calculations.

The standard error (defined as the standard deviation of the difference between the mean velocity field of the DWM and the actuator line model), in the wake region extending from 3 to 12 diameters behind the rotor, is reduced by 27% by using the new eddy viscosity formulation. ©2012 American Society of Mechanical Engineers