Assessment of blockage effects in wind tunnel testing of wind turbines

The aim of the present paper is the analysis of simplified boundary conditions to be used in numerical simulations, to take into account blockage effects for wind tunnel experiments of large scale wind turbines. The goal is the development of an efficient and reliable tool to be used to correct data obtained from experiments where the blockage coefficient is high and/or the turbine is highly loaded, for which traditional correction coefficients (derived from the Glauert theory or its more recent versions) fail. Numerical simulations of the flow around a three-bladed model-scale wind turbine with horizontal axis are reported; in all test cases, the turbine diameter is comparable with test section dimensions, and therefore blockage effects are significant. The actual experiments were approximated numerically with a simplified wind tunnel geometry, that retains the symmetries of the isolated turbine simulation in a rotating frame and therefore allows steady state computations. To this end, two circular wind tunnel were tested: for the first, the radius was chosen to retain the same cross-section as the actual wind tunnel; in the second, its was set to be equal to half of the smallest cross-section dimension. The aerodynamic performances of the turbine, in terms of power and thrust coefficients, are analyzed and compared with available experimental data. Detailed analysis of the flow in the wake is also reported. Analogous simulations in an unbounded domain are also reported. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.