Improved wind-power extraction downstream of a 3D hill using a tilted actuator disk
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
A three-dimensional steep hill with an actuator disk (representing a wind turbine) positioned on the hill-top is investigated experimentally and numerically. Various tilt angles of the disk, inducing wake steering, are tested and compared with the baseline case in which no disk is positioned on the hill-top. The experiments include power measurements in the wake of the hill using an axial-flow turbine rig, and high-speed planar particle image velocimetry (PIV). To obtain information on the three-dimensional flow topology, not available from the PIV data, large eddy simulations are also conducted. Our investigation reveals that when the hill-top disk is tilted in a negative angle, the free-stream flow circumvents the hill more efficiently compared to the other tested cases, resulting in a wake recovery, which is almost as quick as in the baseline case of a hill without the disk on top. Our results also indicate that by positioning a disk on the hill-top, no matter its tilt angle, the turbulent fluctuations in the wake of the hill are significantly reduced, this possibly occurring due to the attenuation of large-scale coherent structures which otherwise develop in the wake of three-dimensional hills.
Date Issued
2025-09-01
Date Acceptance
2025-09-22
Citation
Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, 2025, 17 (5)
ISSN
1941-7012
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Volume
17
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
VC 2025 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
053303
Date Publish Online
2025-10-08