12th Ankara International Aerospace Conference, Ankara, Türkiye, 13 - 15 Eylül 2023, sa.12, ss.1-14
Numerical wind farm simulations are challenging due to the wide range of length and time scales. Actuator models provide a great trade-off between fidelity and computational cost for the simulation of wind turbines rotors in micro-scale numerical atmospheric flow solutions. In this study, large eddy simulation of a large offshore wind farm that consists of 48 wind turbines is conducted with OpenFOAM under unidirectional flow conditions. Inflow is generated as an ideal atmospheric boundary layer profile. Rotors are modeled as advanced rotating actuator disks, where rotor pitch, speed and yaw is automatically controlled dynamically. Equivalent blade and rotors are designed to resemble the turbines utilized in the wind farm, whose details are not available due to commercial purposes. Wake structures are captured physically. Wake-induced power losses are evaluated under the axially-aligned configuration and the results are found to be in alignment with the field measurements.