Modeling and Numerical Analysis of Vestas-V47 Wind Turbine Performance in a Small Scale Wind Farm

In this paper, first the complete geometry of the Vestas wind turbine has been created, and an unstructured mesh around the blades is produced. Velocity profiles have been extracted by assuming a single wind turbine in the assumed computational area and inlet velocity of 6.7 m/s, and it was found that the maximum reduction in velocity has occurred at the nacelle height approximately. Also, velocity recovery at a distance of 2 to 6 times of rotor’s diameter (2D to 6D) is far greater than the distance of 10 to 20 times of the rotor’s diameter (10D to 20D). The velocity reduction has been recovered in 10D downstream of a wind turbine up to 50% and still exists in 20D downstream. It was shown that the wake effect occurs at a maximum distance of 1D besides the turbine. According to the results, the efficiency of the wind farm is 62.0263% if the distance between the turbines is 5D and the input speed to the computational area is 10 m/s. The calculated velocity profile and efficiency obtained from the assumed wind farm come to the conclusion that the optimal distance for placement of wind turbines is 5D downstream and 1.5D lateral.