Evaluating Terrain as a Turbulence Generation Method

Patrick Hawbecker, Matthew Churchfield

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus Citations

Abstract

When driving microscale large-eddy simulations with mesoscale model solutions, turbulence will take space to develop, known as fetch, on the microscale domain. To reduce fetch, it is common to add perturbations near the boundaries to speed up turbulence development. However, when simulating domains over complex terrain, it is possible that the terrain itself can quickly generate turbulence within the boundary layer. It is shown here that rugged terrain is able to generate turbulence without the assistance of a perturbation strategy; however, the levels of turbulence gener-ated are improved when adding perturbations at the inlet. Flow over smoothed, but not flat, terrain fails to generate adequate turbulence throughout the boundary layer in all tests conducted herein. Sensitivities to the strength of the mean wind speed and boundary layer height are investigated and show that higher wind speeds produce turbulence over terrain features that slower wind speeds do not. Further, by increasing the height of the capping inversion, the effectiveness of topography alone to generate turbulence throughout the depth of the boundary is diminished. In all cases, the inclusion of a perturbation strategy improved simulation performance with respect to turbulence development.

Original languageAmerican English
Article number6858
Number of pages26
JournalEnergies
Volume14
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/JA-5000-81049

Keywords

  • atmospheric boundary layer
  • atmospheric large-eddy simulation
  • complex terrain
  • mesoscale-microscale coupling
  • turbulence
  • wind energy

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