Wind field simulation of large horizontal‐axis wind turbine system under different operating conditions

Summary This paper proposes a technique of generating turbulent wind velocities on large horizontal-axis wind turbine systems under different operating conditions. The rotational sampling effect, vertical wind shear and coherence between wind velocities at blades and on the tower were taken into account. Coordinate system of wind time series at certain discrete sampling points on the vertical plane of the wind turbine is generated by the hybrid weighted amplitude wave superposition and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) methods. The POD eigenmodes on the blades after updating locations were calculated subsequently using B-spline surface interpolation method, and the rotationally sampled wind velocities are reconstructed by taking advantage of POD method again. Examples are subsequently presented to validate this proposed technique and demonstrate the generation of wind velocities under different operating conditions. The results show that the simulated spectrum of turbulent wind velocities at blades corresponds well to the measured data and that on the tower agrees well with the fixed point Kaimal spectrum. The reasonable sampling points spacing is suggested to be about 10 m for the wind field simulation of wind turbine system. The proposed method is of great advantage in accuracy and efficiency, which is greatly significant for the fine analysis of multi-megawatt wind turbines. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.