The lattice Boltzmann method for wind farm simulations: a review

Abstract

High-fidelity numerical simulations are currently a key method to gain insight into flows in very large wind farms. However, these simulations are extremely costly in terms of computational resources, and the progress in computational efficiency has been outrun by the growing size of wind farms and the need for simulations. The adoption of massively parallel hardware, namely graphics processing units (GPUs), by the wind energy community has begun, but the numerical structure of the Navier–Stokes equations hinders the efficient use of such hardware. This is one of the reasons that the lattice Boltzmann method has gained increasing attention in recent years. By construction, this method for simulating the Navier–Stokes equations is perfectly parallelizable and well suited for massively parallel hardware. However, as with every new method, the foundation of the method is not widely known by the wind energy community and often met with doubt. This review paper collects the various methods necessary for a potential GPU-resident wind farm flow solver based on the lattice Boltzmann method. Furthermore, it discusses various aspects of the application of the lattice Boltzmann method to wind farm flows and related flow regimes. It also identifies gaps in the current literature and aims to direct future research on the lattice Boltzmann method for wind farm flows.