Abstract
In recent years, wind power generation has been facing problems such as reduction of power generation and flow fluctuation leading to increase of fatigue loads due to turbine wake on downstream wind turbines. Simulations and other studies have been conducted both in Japan and overseas to investigate these problems. However, there have not been many studies on visualization and evaluation of wake flow for actual wind turbines. In this study, we attempted to visualize the wake of an actual wind turbine using snowfall and to evaluate the flow velocity distribution in the wake using the PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) method, taking advantage of the geographical characteristics of Aomori Prefecture, which has one of the highest amounts of wind power generation and snowfall in Japan. As a result, the experiments with small wind turbines allowed for wake visualization to 2D (D: rotor diameter[m]) and numerical analysis to 1D.
