Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/J12185/01
Title:	EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF WIND TURBINE WAKES USING PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY
Principal Investigator:	Greated, Professor C
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	Sch of Physics and Astronomy
Organisation:	University of Edinburgh
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 July 1993	Ends:	30 June 1995	Value (£):	69,340
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Wind Power
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Energy No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
The proposed study is an investigation of wakes that are shed behind wind turbine rotors. An accurate prediction of the wake structure is a dominant factor for reliable wind turbine aerodynamic prediction codes. The lack of detailed experimental data in the wake of a turbine, and the difficulty of obtaining it, is widely appreciated. The proposed programme would address this problem by using the quick flexible laser-optics technique of Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to provide high quality detailed data of the entire flow field of a model wind turbine. A comprehensive experimental study would be carried out to obtain an experimental data base for wake velocities and structure under known conditions for as realistic a wind turbine environment as possible. The data would then be used for comparison with other experiments on wind-tunnel models and full scale wind turbines. An investigation of the influence of Reynolds number on the wake would be undertaken to gain insight into scale effects and to assess the extent to which the results can be extrapolated to full-scale machines. By providing full-field wake geometry data, the proposed PIV experiments offer a chance to validate some of the assumptions made in performance prediction codes. An accompanying theoretical study will examine the sensitivity of performance predictions to wake geometry, vorticity distributions and wake dissipation, as well as testing and comparing vortex wake models.
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