Validating low- and high-fidelity simulations of a yawed 8 MW wind turbine against measurements

This paper presents a comparison study of the aerodynamic behavior of an 8 MW wind turbine operating under yawed conditions using field measurements, Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Turbulent inflow wind field measurements are used to generate an IEC-compliant turbulence box upstream of the wind turbine that is used within the BEM tool MoWiT and the CFD tool chain by IWES in OpenFOAM. Both simulation approaches take into account blade flexibility using modal reduced, anisotropic beam elements in BEM and Geometrically Exact Beam Therory (GEBT) in CFD. While the focus is being set towards the CFD approach, turbine power output, blade root bending moments and blade tip deflections are analyzed. It is shown that both modeling approaches react differently towards the generated wind field.