www.cd-adapco.

com

Wind Farm Flow Assessment

The EnviroWizard with STAR-CCM+

STAR-CCM+ based Wind Resource Assessment:

In Use in Industry Today

Vestas Site Check Tool

for Wind Farm Layout Design

And How Is It Done?

Two Key
Java
Macros

An excellent example of customizable STAR-CCM+

(for workflow in any industrial application
6

In the Background:
On the Vestas Central HPC Cluster in Denmark

Scaling of STAR-CCM+ Application

on Vestas Cluster

The Business Benefit to Vestas

Previous procedure required field engineers to send a

request and files to Vestas Headquarters CFD Group for
processing:

Average turnaround time to receive necessary 3-D CFD

simulation results (data, plots) in standard Vestas report
form: 3 weeks

New, automated push-button procedure, embedded into

Vestas Site Check:

Now fully deployed (since April 2009) to over 100 Vestas

engineers around the world
Average turnaround time from pushing the button to
receiving an e-mail with the needed reports: 2 hours

A productivity speed-up of 250:1

Accurate Wind Resource Assessment:

Effects of Forest Canopies

Powerful State-of-the-Art Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), driven

by a wind-farm-specific EnviroWizard GUI, enables highly-automated
evaluation of rough terrains with forest canopies to more accurately
estimate Annual Electricity Production from proposed wind farms

Forest Modeling
Forest edge = 0.4 roughness

Forest Height = 20m

Porosity Coefficients

Wake Interactions

Modeling the turbine interaction problem

can generally be split into two problems

Near Wake Effects

3D effects
Tip effects
Stall
High fidelity models BEM/CFD required

Far wake (Wind Park Level) including

Wake interaction
Turbulence modelling
Terrain effects
-

Lower fidelity model such as actuator

discs can be used

NASA AMES
Wind Tunnel

Accurate Wind Resource Assessment:

Wake Effects of Multiple Turbines

Powerful State-of-the-Art Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), driven

by a wind-farm-specific EnviroWizard GUI, enables highly-automated
evaluation of very rough terrains and wake effects of multiple turbines
to more accurately estimate Annual Electricity Production from
proposed wind farms

Multiple Wind Turbine Wakes: Formulation Details

Wake Interactions

The STAR-CCM+ EnviroWizard allows the User to

investigate the turbine interaction problem in a quick and
efficient manner
Setting up the case
automatically

Every direction must

be remeshed

Offshore Wind Farm Simulation: Wakes

Askervein Hill

Classic Gaussian Hill Validation Case

Research Report, Taylor & Teunissen, MSRB-84-6, 1983

Wind Direction 210

Summary of the Bolund Blind Experiment and

CD-adapcos Involvement
Steve Evans and Dennis Nagy
February 2010

Most Recent Wind Validation:

Bolund Blind Experiment (December 2009)

Conducted by Risoe/DTU in Denmark (sponsored by Vestas A/S)

Measured wind data (4 months) on Bolund Island (near Risoesee two photos
below and photo on title slide)

8 measurement mast locations (see middle map below)

52 different models/methods (from different companies and research

establishments around the worlde.g., linear, CFD, wind tunnel) were run
(using the data from the two leading-edge masts) for Risoe to compare (blind)
with their remaining measurements.

CD-adapco submitted CFD runs with STAR-CCM+:

Were run during Sept/Oct 09

Results (anonymousgathered and organized by Risoe/DTU) were presented at

the Bolund Workshop (Roskilde, Denmark, Dec. 3-4, 2009)

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Bolund Experiment: CD-adapco Participation

Black Crosses - Met Mast

locations

Sample Results from Bolund Experiment (239)

Turbulent Kinetic Energy

Pink - STAR-CCM+ RANS

Black square Experiment
Red/Blue dots Scale
Model(tunnel)

General Bolund Workshop Conclusions

Linear models (WAsP-like) are less accurate on complex terrains.

CFD is clearly more accurate. Quoting from the Risoe/DTU presentation:

You can get good results with most [CFD] solvers;

The user is more important than the solver

i.e., in CD-adapcos opinion, all CFD results were similarly accurate, so the
practical issue becomes one of speed, automation, and ease of use

Detailed Wind Flow Around Wind Turbines

24

Individual Turbine Wake Turbulence (Animated)

25

Pollution Flow in Complex Energy Production Environments