The impact of the turbine model on gravity wave simulations

Journal article

With the continued growth of wind farm capacity, it is increasingly important for wind farm developers to be able to accurately predict the interactions between wind turbines and large-scale atmospheric phenomena such as gravity waves. Simulating scenarios containing gravity waves requires multi-stage simulations in domains spanning tens of kilometres. To reduce computational costs, lower order actuator models are therefore often used to represent turbines. In this work, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) were performed using an Actuator Disk (AD) model and the higher fidelity Actuator Line (AL) model to assess how turbine representation impacts the predicted atmospheric gravity wave field and turbine wake. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the AD model predictions to mesh resolution and the model’s thrust coefficient were evaluated. The results showed that the gravity wave field produced was largely independent of the chosen actuator model. However, the predicted wake shape, length, and velocity profile varied considerably between the actuator models and with the level of mesh resolution at the AD rotor plane. Overall, the turbine thrust magnitude was found to have the greatest influence on the predicted gravity waves. Since turbine wake characteristics were also shown to be heavily impacted by the wave field that develops, correct thrust prediction was therefore found to be important for farm-scale performance predictions that account for atmospheric gravity waves.

Authors: Rafferty, T; Vogel, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: Journal of Physics: Conference Series
• Volume: 3224
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 032077
• Article number: 032077
• Publication date: 2026-05-01
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/3224/3/032077
• EISSN: 1742-6596
• ISSN: 1742-6588
• Language: English