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CEE 269C EnvEng Seminar: Lawrence Cheung "Large eddy simulations of wind turbine and wind farm wakes"

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Abstract: With the continuing growth in wind energy, the ability to accurately predict wind turbine and farm wakes, including their interactions with the surrounding atmosphere and neighboring sites, is one of the current grand challenges in wind energy science. Wind farm wakes can significantly degrade the power performance of downstream wind plants and increase the overall cost of wind energy, and also be difficult to capture with current models. In this talk, we discuss recent work using the DOE’s ExaWind simulation codes to model wakes at both the individual turbine scale and for larger collections of wind farms. Comparisons of individual turbine wake behavior between large eddy simulations and measured data from the Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility will be presented. At the larger scale, simulations of multiple wind farms performed as a part of the American WAKE Experiment (AWAKEN) will be shown, and the farm wake behavior and upstream wind farm blockage will also be analyzed. Lastly, we will consider recent developments in active wake control strategies using shear flow stability theory to reduce wake length through the introduction of specific periodic perturbations at the rotor.

Bio: Lawrence Cheung is a principal member of technical staff in the Thermal/Fluid Science and Engineering department at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA, working in the development and application of high fidelity CFD methods to renewable energy technologies. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and physics and obtained his M.S. and PhD degrees from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering. Afterwards, he was a Marshall Sherfield and Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London, and worked at General Electric Research in Niskayuna, NY, for eight years before joining Sandia in 2019.  Acknowledgements: Sandia National Laboratories is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525. SAND2023-02337

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