Wake structures and performance of wind turbine rotor with harmonic surging motions under laminar and turbulent inflows

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive numerical analysis of a full-scale horizontal-axis Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) subjected to harmonic surging motions under both laminar and turbulent inflow conditions. Utilizing high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, namely Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) with Actuator Line Model (ALM), this research investigates the rotor performance, wake characteristics, and wake structures of a surging FOWT in detail. The study delves into the influence of varying inflow turbulence intensities, surging settings, and their interplay on the aerodynamic performance and the wake aerodynamics of a FOWT rotor. The results show that, through employing the phase-locking technique, Surging Induced Periodic Coherent Structures (SIPCS) can be identified in the wake of all the surging cases studied, irrespective of the inflow conditions and the surging settings. Additionally, the findings show that the faster wake recovery observed in the surging-laminar cases is not caused by facilitating instability-induced faster wake breakdown, a previously accepted hypothesis. Instead, it is the enhanced advection process resulting from the induction fields of SIPCS that causes the wake to recover faster. The analysis of rotor performance shows that the time-averaged rotor performances are affected by the intricate dynamics arising from the surging motions. With certain surging settings, the time-averaged thrust and the time-averaged power of a surging rotor are found to be simultaneously lower and higher compared to those of a fixed rotor. Furthermore, the study underscores the importance of considering both the magnitude of surging and the rate of surging ($\mathcal{V}$ and $\mathcal{W}$) simultaneously to fully characterize the hysteresis load on a surging rotor.