A low-fidelity dynamic wind farm model for simulating time-varying wind conditions and floating platform motion

Abstract This paper introduces a dynamic parametric wind farm model that is capable of simulating floating wind turbine platform motion coupled with wake transport under time-varying wind conditions. The simulator is named FOWFSim-Dyn as it is a dynamic extension of the previously developed steady-state Floating Offshore Wind Farm Simulator (FOWFSim). One-dimensional momentum conservation is used to model dynamic propagation of wake centerline locations and average velocities, while momentum recovery is approximated with the assumption of a constant temporal wake expansion rate. Platform dynamics are captured by treating a floating offshore wind farm as a distribution of particles that are subject to aerodynamic, hydrodynamic, and mooring line forces. The finite difference method is used to discretize the momentum conservation equations to yield a nonlinear state-space model. FOWFSim-Dyn is validated against steady-state experimental wind tunnel data obtained from the literature along with simulation results acquired from FAST. The model is shown to possess a satisfactory level of fidelity for engineering applications. Finally, dynamic simulations are conducted to ensure that time-varying predictions match physical expectations and intuition.