No Arabic abstract
The LiDAR Statistical Barnes Objective Analysis (LiSBOA), presented in Letizia et al., is a procedure for the optimal design of LiDAR scans and calculation over a Cartesian grid of the statistical moments of the velocity field. The LiSBOA is applied to LiDAR data collected in the wake of wind turbines to reconstruct mean and turbulence intensity of the wind velocity field. The proposed procedure is firstly tested for a numerical dataset obtained by means of the virtual LiDAR technique applied to the data obtained from a large eddy simulation (LES). The optimal sampling parameters for a scanning Doppler pulsed wind LiDAR are retrieved from the LiSBOA, then the estimated statistics are calculated showing a maximum error of about 4% for both the normalized mean velocity and the turbulence intensity. Subsequently, LiDAR data collected during a field campaign conducted at a wind farm in complex terrain are analyzed through the LiSBOA for two different configurations. In the first case, the wake velocity fields of four utility-scale turbines are reconstructed on a 3D grid, showing the capability of the LiSBOA to capture complex flow features, such as high-speed jet around the nacelle and the wake turbulent shear layers. For the second case, the statistics of the wakes generated by four interacting turbines are calculated over a 2D Cartesian grid and compared to the measurements provided by the nacelle-mounted anemometers. Maximum discrepancies as low as 3% for the normalized mean velocity and turbulence intensity endorse the application of the LiSBOA for LiDAR-based wind resource assessment and diagnostic surveys for wind farms.
A LiDAR Statistical Barnes Objective Analysis (LiSBOA) for optimal design of LiDAR scans and retrieval of the velocity statistical moments is proposed. The LiSBOA represents an adaptation of the classical Barnes scheme for the statistical analysis of unstructured experimental data in N-dimensional spaces and it is a suitable technique for the evaluation over a structured Cartesian grid of the statistics of scalar fields sampled through scanning LiDARs. The LiSBOA is validated and characterized via a Monte Carlo approach applied to a synthetic velocity field. This revisited theoretical framework for the Barnes objective analysis enables the formulation of guidelines for optimal design of LiDAR experiments and efficient application of the LiSBOA for the post-processing of LiDAR measurements. The optimal design of LiDAR scans is formulated as a two cost-function optimization problem including the minimization of the percentage of the measurement volume not sampled with adequate spatial resolution and the minimization of the error on the mean of the velocity field. The optimal design of the LiDAR scans also guides the selection of the smoothing parameter and the total number of iterations to use for the Barnes scheme.
Wind turbine wakes are the result of the extraction of kinetic energy from the incoming atmospheric wind exerted from a wind turbine rotor. Therefore, the reduced mean velocity and enhanced turbulence intensity within the wake are affected by the characteristics of the incoming wind, turbine blade aerodynamics, and the turbine control settings. In this work, LiDAR measurements of isolated wakes generated by wind turbines installed at an onshore wind farm are leveraged to characterize the variability of the wake mean velocity and turbulence intensity during typical operations encompassing a breadth of atmospheric stability regimes, levels of power capture, and, in turn, rotor thrust coefficients. For the statistical analysis of the wake velocity fields, the LiDAR measurements are clustered through a k-means algorithm, which enables to identify of the most representative realizations of the wind turbine wakes while avoiding the imposition of thresholds for the various wind and turbine parameters, which can be biased by preconceived, and potentially incorrect, notions. Considering the large number of LiDAR samples collected to probe the wake velocity field over the horizontal plane at hub height, the dimensionality of the experimental dataset is reduced by projecting the LiDAR data on an intelligently-truncated basis obtained with the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The coefficients of only five physics-informed POD modes, which are considered sufficient to reproduce the observed wake variability, are then injected in the k-means algorithm for clustering the LiDAR dataset. The analysis of the clustered LiDAR data, and the associated SCADA and meteorological data, enables the study of the variability of the wake velocity deficit, wake extent, and wake-added turbulence intensity for different thrust coefficients of the turbine rotor and regimes of atmospheric stability.
A two-year measurement campaign of the ZephIR 300 vertical profiling continuous-wave (CW) focusing wind lidar has been carried out by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) at the Cabauw site. We focus on the (height-dependent) data availability of the wind lidar under various meteorological conditions and the data quality through a comparison with in situ wind measurements at several levels in the 213-m tall meteorological mast. We find an overall availability of quality controlled wind lidar data of 97 % to 98 %, where the missing part is mainly due to precipitation events exceeding 1 mm/h or fog or low clouds below 100 m. The mean bias in the horizontal wind speed is within 0.1 m/s with a high correlation between the mast and wind lidar measurements, although under some specific conditions (very high wind speed, fog or low clouds) larger deviations are observed. The mean bias in the wind direction is within 2 degrees, which is on the same order as the combined uncertainty in the alignment of the wind lidars and the mast wind vanes. The well-known 180 degree error in the wind direction output for this type of instrument occurs about 9 % of the time. A correction scheme based on data of an auxiliary wind vane at a height of 10 m is applied, leading to a reduction of the 180 degree error below 2 %. This scheme can be applied in real-time applications in case a nearby, freely exposed, mast with wind direction measurements at a single height is available.
Super-large-scale particle image velocimetry (SLPIV) using natural snowfall is used to investigate the influence of nacelle and tower generated flow structures on the near-wake of a 2.5 MW wind turbine at the EOLOS field station. The analysis is based on the data collected in a field campaign on March 12th, 2017, with a sample area of 125 m (vertical) x 70 m (streamwise) centred on the plane behind the turbine support tower. The SLPIV measurement provides the velocity field over the entire rotor span, revealing a region of accelerated flow around the hub caused by the reduction in axial induction at the blade roots. The in-plane turbulent kinetic energy field shows an increase in turbulence in the regions of large shear behind the blade tips and the hub, and a reduction in turbulence behind the tower where the large-scale turbulent structures in the boundary layer are broken up. Snow voids reveal coherent structures shed from the blades, nacelle, and tower. The hub wake meandering frequency is quantified and found to correspond to the vortex shedding frequency of an Ahmed body (St=0.06). Persistent hub wake deflection is observed and shown to be connected with the turbine yaw error. In the region below the hub, strong interaction between the tower- and blade-generated structures is observed. The temporal characteristics of this interaction are quantified by the co-presence of two dominant frequencies, one corresponding to the blade vortex shedding at the blade pass frequency and the other corresponding to tower vortex shedding at St=0.2. This study highlights the influence of the tower and nacelle on the behaviour of the near-wake, informing model development and elucidating the mechanisms that influence wake evolution.
This paper presents a method to detect reflection of 3D light detection and ranging (Lidar) scans and uses it to classify the points and also map objects outside the line of sight. Our software uses several approaches to analyze the point cloud, including intensity peak detection, dual return detection, plane fitting, and finding the boundaries. These approaches can classify the point cloud and detect the reflection in it. By mirroring the reflection points on the detected window pane and adding classification labels on the points, we can improve the map quality in a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) framework. Experiments using real scan data and ground truth data showcase the effectiveness of our method.