Wind tunnel experiments: cold-air pooling and atmospheric decoupling above a melting snow patch

The longevity of perennial snowfields is not fully understood, but it is known that strong atmospheric stability and thus boundary-layer decoupling limit the amount of (sensible and latent) heat that can be transmitted from the atmosphere to the snow surface. The strong stability is typically caused by two factors, (i) the temperature difference between the (melting) snow surface and the near-surface atmosphere and (ii) cold-air pooling in topographic depressions. These factors are almost always a prerequisite for perennial snowfields to exist. For the first time, this contribution investigates the relative importance of the two factors in a controlled wind tunnel environment. Vertical profiles of sensible heat and momentum fluxes are measured using two-component hot-wire and one-component cold-wire anemometry directly over the melting snow patch. The comparison between a flat snow surface and one that has a depression shows that atmospheric decoupling is strongly increased in the case of topographic sheltering but only for low to moderate wind speeds. For those conditions, the near-surface suppression of turbulent mixing was observed to be strongest, and the ambient flow was decoupled from the surface, enhancing near-surface atmospheric stability over the single snow patch.

Large-Eddy Simulation of Turbulent Boundary Layer Flow through Wind Turbines and Wind Farms

Yu-Ting Wu

In this thesis, we develop a new large-eddy simulation (LES) framework to simulate atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) flows through wind turbines and wind farms. A Lagrangian scale-dependent dynamic model is used to compute the Smagorinsky model coefficient dynamically based on the local dynamics of the resolved velocity field. The turbine-generated power outputs and the turbine-induced forces (e.g., thrust, lift, drag) are parameterized using two actuator-disk models: (a) the traditional actuator-disk model without rotation (ADM-NR), which uses 1D momentum theory to relate the power output and the uniform thrust force distribution with an incoming velocity; and (b) the actuator-disk model with rotation (ADM-R), which adopts blade element theory to calculate the lift and drag forces (that produce thrust, rotor shaft torque, and power) based on the local blade and flow characteristics. The performance of the LES framework is first evaluated through comparisons with high-resolution velocity measurements collected in the wind-tunnel experiments with the single wake of a stand-alone miniature wind turbine [Chamorro and Porté-Agel, 2010a] as well as the multiple turbine wakes in a model aligned wind farm [Chamorro and Porté-Agel, 2011]. Emphasis is placed on the structure and characteristics of the simulated turbine wakes using the ADM-NR and the ADM-R. In general, the ADM-R yields improved predictions compared with the ADM-NR in the wake regions, where the ADM-NR tends to underestimate the velocity deficit and the enhancement of turbulence intensity in the wakes. Next, the LES framework is used to model multiple turbine wakes and associated power losses in a large wind farm. Here, we propose a new dynamic procedure coupled with the ADM-R to predict turbine power output based on a turbine-model-specific relationship between the shaft torque and the blade angular speed. The Horns Rev offshore wind farm is chosen as a case study since both power data from eighty Vestas V80 wind turbines and flow data from three nearby meteorological masts were available [Barthelmie et al., 2009]. The torque-speed relationship for the V80 turbine is obtained from a series of stand-alone turbine simulations. In the wind farm simulations, the ADM-R gives the best power prediction. Finally, the validated LES framework is used to study atmospheric turbulence effects on wind-turbine wakes in neutrally-stratified ABL over homogeneous flat surfaces with four different aerodynamic roughness lengths. In this study, the simulation result shows that the different turbulence intensity levels of the incoming flow lead to considerable influence on the spatial distribution of the mean velocity deficit, turbulence intensity, and turbulent shear stress in the wake region. In particular, when the turbulence intensity level of the incoming flow is higher, the turbine-induced wake (velocity deficit) recovers faster, and the locations of the maximum turbulence intensity and turbulent stress are closer to the turbine.

EPFL2013

How do patchy snow covers affect turbulent sensible heat fluxes? – Numerical analysis and experimental findings

Michael Lehning, Sebastian Schlögl

The surface energy balance of a snow cover significantly changes once the snow cover gets patchy. The substantial progress in knowledge about the surface energy balance of patchy snow covers is a mandatory requirement to reduce biases in flux parameterizations in larger scale meteorological or climatological models. The aim of this project was to numerically improve energy balance calculations late in the melting season when the spatial variability of turbulent fluxes is especially high owing to the complex feedback between bare/snow-covered areas and the atmosphere above. In order to account for the feedback between the atmosphere and the patchy snow-cover we calculated three-dimensional air temperature and wind velocity fields with the non-hydrostatic atmospheric model ARPS for an idealized flat test site initialized with different snow distributions and atmospheric conditions. The physics-based surface process model Alpine3D has been forced with these atmospheric fields close to the snow surface in order to resolve the small-scale spatial variability. We further initialized the model with atmospheric fields above the blending height as a reference case. The numerical analysis shows that for simulations initialized with fully-resolved atmospheric fields below the blending height, turbulent sensible heat fluxes are up to 50 W m-2 larger than for calculations forced without resolved atmospheric fields. This difference in turbulent sensible heat fluxes over snow increase with increasing number of snow patches and decreasing snow-cover fraction. This is mainly attributed to an increase in the mean near-surface air temperature over snow due to horizontal and vertical exchange processes induced by the heterogeneous land-surface. We used flux footprint estimations to analyse turbulence data measured during three ablation periods in the Dischma valley (Switzerland). This fundamental theory was deployed for eddy-covariance measurements revealing the origin of the measured turbulence as a function of the measurement height, atmospheric stability and wind speed. For patchy snow covers with flux footprints larger than the fetch distance, the observed turbulence is typically recorded as a combination of the turbulence over snow and the turbulence over the adjacent bare ground. These conditions were observed in the upper Dischma valley at the end of the melting period for a small snow cover fraction (< 30 %). The strong influence of the bare ground on the heat exchange over snow leads to much smaller measured heat fluxes than calculated in the physics-based one-dimensional snow model SNOWPACK. We show that at least two eddy-covariance measurements in different vertical heights and a snow cover mask to detect the fetch distance are required to clearly separate the turbulence over snow and the turbulence over the adjacent bare ground. Using the footprint technique turbulent sensible heat fluxes towards the snow patch significantly increase by this separation. This approach will allow an improved parametrization of turbulent heat fluxes over patchy snow-covers in larger-scale energy balance models.

2017

Large-Eddy Simulation of the Convective Atmospheric Boundary Layer over Heterogeneous Land Surfaces

Chad Higgins, Daniel Nadeau, Eric Richard Pardyjak, Marc Parlange

The parameterization of the atmospheric boundary layer is essential for accurate numerical weather predictions. The near-surface values of air temperature or wind speed for instance are highly dependent on the complex land – atmosphere interactions over heterogeneous terrain. Over such surfaces, several open challenges remain regarding the growth of internal boundary layers, the determination of mixing layer heights and the spatial distribution of heat and momentum fluxes. The large-eddy simulation (LES) code we apply is based on the robust Lagrangian scale-dependent dynamic subgrid-scale model (Bou-Zeid et al., 2005, Physics of Fluids). The flow is driven by a mean pressure gradient expressed in terms of horizontal geostrophic winds. The code is pseudo-spectral with spectral decomposition in the horizontal dimensions. Land surface heterogeneities take the form of spatially distributed patches of surface temperature and roughness derived from satellite imagery and land use analysis. The simulation of the complete diurnal cycle is possible but we restrict our discussion to fully convective conditions. Data from LITFASS – 2003 (Lindenberg Inhomogeneous Terrain Fluxes between Atmosphere and Surface: a long-term Study) are used to validate the simulation results. The LES domain covers a 99-m meteorological tower with turbulent measurements and five surface micrometeorological stations. We investigate the presence of large-scale turbulent structures that are typical for daytime conditions with a particular interest in the blending height. Overall, this study illustrates how important is the accurate parameterization of heterogeneous terrain in studies of the atmospheric boundary layer.