Study on the Wake of a Miniature Wind Turbine Using the Reynolds Stress Model

The Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) is adopted to simulate the wind turbine wake and the simulation results are compared with the wind tunnel test data, simulation results from the standard k-ε model and a modified k-ε model. RSM shows good performance in predicting the turbine wakes velocity, turbulence intensity and the kinetic shear stress, while the k-ε based models fail to predict either wakes velocity or turbulence intensity. Simulation results show that the wake velocity will be recovered up to 90% at around 10 D downstream of the turbine (D denotes turbine rotor diameter) and it stops at 91% at around 16 D downstream. The wake turbulence intensity reaches a maximum at around 5 D downstream of turbine. Further investigation shows that the horizontal profile of the wakes velocity can be approximated by a Gaussian distribution, and the turbulence intensity can be approximated by a bimodal distribution. The influence of the wakes effect is limited to within ±D in the across-wind direction. The turbine wakes show clear anisotropy, which could explain the incorrect estimation on the turbulence intensity with the extended k-ε model.