Assessment of wind turbine wake definitions for quantifying unsteady wake characteristics

Journal article

Mitigation of wake effects in wind farms often relies on predictive wake models, which are typically developed using parameters calibrated from transient wind turbine wake data. Therefore, accurate identification of instantaneous turbine wakes is essential for improving wind farm yield. Despite the wide range of proposed wake definitions, no consensus has been reached on a definition that is appropriate for characterising instantaneous wakes. This study presents a quantitative assessment of several commonly used wake definitions using a computational dataset of wind turbine wakes. The definitions are evaluated based on their ability to consistently identify the wake region and centre and to generate wake shapes that are physically consistent with turbine thrust. The results demonstrate that only a limited subset of the examined definitions is suitable for identifying unsteady wind turbine wakes, and that the choice of wake definition can significantly bias estimates of wake width expansion rate and wake meandering amplitude.

Authors: Adam, AA; Smyth, AS; Vogel, CR

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: Journal of Physics: Conference Series
• Volume: 3224
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 032119
• Article number: 032119
• Publication date: 2026-05-01
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/3224/3/032119
• EISSN: 1742-6596
• ISSN: 1742-6588
• Language: English