Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Propagating Turbulent Structures in Atmospheric Flow, and Their Effects on Vortex Evolution in Wind Turbine Wakes

Modern wind turbines have adapted to increasing power demands through larger rotors and proportionally lighter blades. These lightweight designs are often more responsive to atmospheric fluctuations, resulting in complex rotor aeroelastic behavior and interactions between turbine wakes and background wind. In this study, wind measurements recorded at meteorological towers and turbine nacelles at Sandia National Laboratories’ Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility are used to characterize propagating wind patterns within the farm flow. These measurements inform a resolved-scale atmospheric flow model using novel spatio-temporally variant (STV) wind input methods. Turbine aeroelastic response and farm-scale wake interactions are simulated within the Common Ordinary Differential Equation Framework (CODEF). Simulated wake structure and downstream flow velocity are compared with SWiFT Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) measurements to evaluate the influence and propagation of large-scale coherent atmospheric fluctuations as they mutually advect with turbine wake vortex structures. This investigation demonstrates the capabilities of the proposed STV atmospheric modeling methods and provides a validated approach for studying turbine aeroelastic behavior and wake evolution under realistic, space and time-varying atmospheric conditions.