PhD Studentship: Single-turbine Scale Quantification of Wake Turbulence

Supervisor(s)

1. Professor Chris Keylock (Loughborough University)
2. Dr Yi Li (University of Sheffield)
3. Professor Michele Guala (University of Minnesota)

Enquiries email: c.j.keylock@lboro.ac.uk

Subject areas

• Engineering & Technology
• Mathematics & Statistics
• Physics & Astronomy

Project description

Individual wind turbines produce turbulent wakes that have implications for maximum power generation from downwind turbines, increased fatigue loads and associated maintenance costs (Porté-Agel et al., 2020). There are also associated environmental issues such as noise generation, and the introduction of large-scale flow structures to the atmospheric flow field. There have been a number of studies of these phenomena and Howard et al. (2015) and Kadum et al. (2019) have undertaken detailed studies of aspects of these dynamics. At the heart of this project is an attempt to develop deeper understanding of these phenomena in terms of the flow physics and to provide practical modelling methods that correctly represent these physics. 

Of particular interest is the nature of the non-local energy transfers identified in the references cited above. Hence, this project will consider the non-equilibrium energy scaling for near-field wakes and how these effects can be captured in subgrid-scale models. Furthermore, we are interested in understanding how these non-local energy transfers relate to the behaviour of the flow’s pressure field, which provides another dimension to model development (Keylock, 2018).

Methodology:

The project will have three key stages to it:

(a) direct numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow with a suitable forcing included to represent the turbines;

(b) analysis of the large datasets that result, extracting and summarising the physics from the stored quantities;

(c) formulation of large-eddy simulation parameterisations based on the outcomes of (a) and (b). A study making use of some of our concepts in this regard is that by Yu et al. (2021).

An aspect of the project will involve undertaking comparative numerical experiments with control for helicity/helicoidal wake generation (see Li et al., 2006).

An exciting potential dimension to this project is to link the numerical results to field experiments conducted at the University of Minnesota.

Eligibility requirements

Entry Requirements

If you have received a First-class Honours degree, or a 2:1 Honours degree and a Masters, or a Distinction at Master’s level with any undergraduate degree (or the international equivalents) in engineering, mathematics and statistics or physics, we would like to hear from you.

Eligibility

Research Council funding for postgraduate research has residence requirements. We have reached our quota for international students for 2025 entry, so all our advertised CDT scholarships are only available to Home (UK) Students. To be considered a Home student, and therefore eligible for a full award, a student must have no restrictions on how long they can stay in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least 3 years prior to the start of the scholarship (with some further constraint regarding residence for education).

Closes: 9 May 2025

Advert information