Lin, M.; Porté-Agel, F. Power Production and Blade Fatigue of a Wind Turbine Array Subjected to Active Yaw Control. Energies2023, 16, 2542.
Lin, M.; Porté-Agel, F. Power Production and Blade Fatigue of a Wind Turbine Array Subjected to Active Yaw Control. Energies 2023, 16, 2542.
Lin, M.; Porté-Agel, F. Power Production and Blade Fatigue of a Wind Turbine Array Subjected to Active Yaw Control. Energies2023, 16, 2542.
Lin, M.; Porté-Agel, F. Power Production and Blade Fatigue of a Wind Turbine Array Subjected to Active Yaw Control. Energies 2023, 16, 2542.
Abstract
This study investigates the power production and blade fatigue of a three-turbine array subjected to active yaw control (AYC) in full-wake and partial-wake configurations. A framework of two-way coupled large-eddy simulation (LES) and aeroelastic blade simulation is applied to simulate the atmospheric boundary-layer (ABL) flow through the turbine array and the structural responses of the turbine blades. Mean power outputs and blade fatigue loads are extracted from the simulation results. By exploring the feasible AYC decision space, we find that (a) in the full-wake configuration, the local power-optimal AYC strategy with positive yaw angles endures less flapwise blade fatigue and more edgewise blade fatigue than the global power-optimal strategy; (b) in the partial-wake configuration, applying positive AYC in certain inflow wind directions achieves higher optimal power gains than that in the full-wake scenario and reduces the blade fatigue from the non-yawed benchmark. Through a theoretical analysis based on the blade element momentum theory, we reveal that the aforementioned differences in flapwise blade fatigue between the positively and negatively yawed turbine are due to the differences in the azimuthal distributions of the local relative velocity on blade sections, resulting from the combined effects of vertical wind shear and blade rotation. Furthermore, the difference in the blade force between the positively and negatively yawed front-row turbine induces different wake velocity and turbulence distributions, causing different fatigue loads on the downwind turbine exposed to the wake.
Keywords
wind power; wind turbine fatigue; active yaw control
Subject
Engineering, Energy and Fuel Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
