Development of a reduced-order model for wind turbine response to atmospheric turbulence in forest regions

Paper in proceeding, 2014

A reduced-order structural model of a wind turbine has been developed and coupled with wind shear and turbulence fields generated computationally by Large-Eddy Simulation (LES). The wind turbine is composed of rigid but rotating blades on top of a flexible tower structure. Turbulence data from LES over a forest and over low-roughness flat terrain were tested in the proposed model. It was found that, while maintaining the same mean wind speed at the hub height, turbulence appears strongly increased in the atmospheric boundary layer above a forest. Subsequently, the dynamic loads on the wind turbine structure are more than doubled for the case with forest.