CFD studies of wake characteristics and power capture of wind turbines with trailing edge flaps

Abstract

Trailing edge flap (TEF) devices will change downstream wake development in wind farms comprising smart rotors, which in turn affect the performance of downstream wind turbines. To study the influence of TEFs on downstream wake development and power capture of wind turbines in wind farms, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations using the three-dimensional rotor model are performed in this paper. The CFD software Fluent is adopted to simulate a wind farm with two tandem wind turbines with TEFs at rated and below rated turbulent wind conditions. Under the 11.4 m/s turbulent wind conditions, the results show that the deflection of the TEF increases the velocity deficit and reduces the wake width, making the wake more complicated. And the positive TEF angle has a greater influence on downstream wake than the negative TEF angle. Additionally, under the 9 m/s turbulent wind conditions, the total power of the two wind turbines increases by 6.5% when the TEF angles are 6°.