Aerdyanmic Assessment and Wake Analysis of a Small Horizonatal Axis Multi-Rotor Wind Turbine

New generation of wind turbines, in comparison to the old versions, have been designed with colossal blades to produce larger amount of power output. However, this has led into some unpredictable challenges including their construction procedure and expenses and particularly blades’ transportation. To overcome these issues, multi-rotor wind turbines have been suggested. Aerodynamic performances of such turbines have been previously assessed by other investigators. However, the wake characteristics of these turbines have been less studied. The focus of the present research is on the assessment of these characteristics, which are crucial in the process of any wind farm design. For this purpose, wake flow of a small three-rotor wind turbine is numerically simulated using computational fluid dynamics. A numerical simulation has been conducted for a single-rotor wind turbine and three-rotor small horizontal axis wind turbine with the angle of 180⸰ arrangement. The results of single rotor wind turbine indicated that far downstream wake extended up to 8D, with Jensen-Gaussian model can be better predicted. The comparison between three bladed wind turbine and the results of wake models for the equivalent turbine showed that because of wake interactions in the downstream of the rotor, the loss of turbulent kinetic energy and recovery of the stream speed will be faster. As a result, in the wind farms, the turbines in closer distances around 4D of the equivalent signle-rotor wind turbine can be installed.