Numerical simulations of fatigue loads on wind turbines operating in wakes

Wake effects increase the fatigue loads on wind turbines in operation. However, the wake flow is considerably different from the traditional boundary layer flow, and poses many challenges in determining the fatigue loads on wind turbines operating in a wake. Therefore, in the present study, the actuator-line model was adopted to numerically simulate the wake flow and an in-house code named AOWT, which is based on a generalized coordinate method, was developed for analyzing the dynamics of wind turbines under an arbitrary distribution of the turbulent flow field varying in time and space. Using the numerically modeled instantaneous wake flow fields and AOWT, the dynamic response of a wind turbine, located at specified positions in both tandem and staggered arrangements in a wake, was examined, and the fatigue loads were determined. Furthermore, to determine the major contributions to the fatigue loads, the loads induced by the spatial variation of the mean flow fields were predicted. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no such analysis has been conducted thus far. Importantly, it was found that in the near-wake region, the mean flow field had a significant influence on the fatigue loads, especially in the staggered layout. However, there is no analytical wake model available in the literature capable of predicting the near-wake mean flow fields. Therefore, in this study, a near-wake model was proposed, which yielded satisfactory predictions of the mean velocities in the near-wake region.