EFFECT OF TURBULENCE INTENSITIES ON PRESSURE DISTRIBUTION OF WIND TURBINE NACELLES IN WIND TUNNEL EXPERIMENT

Abstract

In the study wind tunnel experiments are conducted to investigate pressure distribution on a wind turbine nacelle for uniform and turbulent inflow conditions. To that end pressure field data is collected using pressure taps distributed over one side of an ellipsoid type nacelle. It was found that although the higher inflow turbulence increases the magnitude of maximum and minimum pressure in regions away from the tower, minimum peak pressure under uniform inflow in the region influenced by the tower is lower than that of high turbulence inflow case. It was further found that the maximum peak pressures are the function of inflow turbulence and can be estimated accurately using conventional approach (Eurocode). However, the negative peak pressure downstream of the tower for uniform inflow is significantly underestimated by such conventional approach. This is because the effect of tower is more pronounced when the inflow is uniform.