POD analysis of a wind turbine wake in a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer

Abstract

The wake of a single wind turbine is modeled using an actuator disk model and large eddy simulations. As inflow condition a numerically generated turbulent atmospheric boundary layer is used. The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) is applied to a plane perpendicular to the main flow in the far wake of the turbine. Reconstructions of the field are investigated depending on the numbers of POD modes used. Even though a great number of modes is needed to recover a great part of the turbulent kinetic energy, our results indicate that relevant aspects of a wake flow can be recovered using only a few modes. Particularly, the dynamics of the average velocity over a potential disk in the wake can partially be captured using only three modes. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.